Extracts

‘Land is the foundation of all our trouble’, said Te Rauparaha of Ngati Toa and Ngati Raukawa when asked to account for the circumstances that had led to the killing of twenty- two Pakeha settlers and two Maori at Wairau on 17 June 1843.

Discarded medical equipment litters the floor: surgical tools blistered with rust, broken bottles, jars, the scratched spine of an old invalid chair.

It was a wild and lightning-struck night.

When people say ‘terminal’, I think of the airport.

A stir moves through the Pride House Group Home, and seconds later adolescent faces pig against the muggy front window.

My best friend, a seasoned homicide detective, is a master of discontent.

I CHECKED THE street in both directions in front of an upscale coffee house called Flat Bread and Butter on Amsterdam Avenue near 140th Street. The street was about as quiet as New York City gets.

It turns out the place we stopped for the night was a public park.

A slap. A cry. Distress, which seems a poor enough start to things.

Your house glows at night like everything inside is on fire.

Twig dolls peculiar to the small Sussex village of Chapel Croft.

I’m late for dinner again, but this time it’s not my fault. There’s a mansplainer in my way.

I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency—after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled west for a long-deferred break.

Most morning, my husband, Doug, wakes up before me and reads the news in bed.

IT TOOK BOBBY a week to decide where to park. It had to be close to the wedding, but not too close.

The night she died, all our phones were turned off.

Twenty-Five years ago, Sam Neill wrote the introduction to this book’s predecessor, Timeless Land.