Award-winning historical fiction author Vicky Adin is coming to the library on Thursday 10 November to tell us about her New-Zealand inspired novels as part of our Writers and Readers programme.

Vicky describes herself as a genealogist in love with history and words. She loves to weave family stories and bygone days together in a way that brings the past alive. She recently won a Gold Medal in the Women’s Historical Fiction Category in The Coffee Pot Book Club Book of Year Award 2022 for Gwenna the Welsh Confectioner.

Her latest novel, Elinor, is a dual-timeline tale about discovering your roots. The story follows a rural family living in the Manawatū throughout the post-war years of the 1920s and into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Vicky has many connections with the Manawatū. Her surname may be familiar to some. She married into a family who first came to Foxton in the 1860s. Many descendants still live in the area today. A wander around the cemetery will tell its own tale, or you could read her first book, The Disenchanted Soldier.

The Disenchanted Soldier is inspired by the true story of Daniel Adin, a British soldier fighting in the New Zealand Wars of 1864. Delve into the riveting experiences of a young British soldier in war-torn New Zealand and after, where Daniel, as patriarch and the father of World War One conscientious objectors, faces natural disasters, endures family tragedies and witnesses the birth of a nation.

We had a chat with Vicky to get the conversation started:

PNCL: Hi Vicky, please tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a Welsh-born, Cornish-raised Kiwi. I’m also a genealogist, antique lover, wife, mother, grandmother, and all-round nosy parker. I love Mediterranean food and red wine. Fortunately, I love to cook, but I love words more. My favourite past-time is delving into the past, looking at old photos, reading old newspapers and discovering those who shaped our world.

PNCL: What inspired you to write your latest book, Elinor?

Genealogical research. It’s such a mouthful, I wish there was a simpler word for it – but I find by digging into the social aspects of the past I understand more of how New Zealand developed as a nation. Elinor is not one person; she is a compilation of many women; women who survived whatever life threw at them. The fact she lived in Manawatū and for a short time in Pahīatua, is a bonus.

PNCL: What inspired you to write your latest book, Elinor?

New Zealand is a young country by world standards. After the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Pākehā immigrants began to arrive in their thousands to create a new way of life in an untamed land with little infrastructure. My stories reflect the everyday struggles of those immigrants to our beautiful country. Except there was nothing ordinary about how the women survived; women who rarely appear in the annals of history but who oversaw the birth of a nation and helped shape many lives. They are the people who inspire me.

PNCL: How many books have you written?

I have six books in The New Zealand Immigrant Collection – they are family sagas about overcoming the odds. Some are entirely historical, some are dual-timeline, others are contemporary novels about searching for the past. One of those stories, Gwenna the Welsh Confectioner is set in Karangahape Road at the turn of the 19^th century. The other stories in the collection are The Disenchanted Soldier, The Cornish knot, Portrait of a man, Brigid : the girl from County Clare and The Costumier’s Gift.

Elinor is Book Two in a new series The Art of Secrets, a series about about finding your roots. Book 3 is due out next year.

You can meet and hear from Vicky at the Central Library, second floor, on Thursday 10 November at 10:30am. The event includes morning tea and a chance to win a prize. Please RSVP to vicky@vickyadin.co.nz