Donna Goodacre, who is of Tainui descent, is a retired high school/correctional centre/vocational school English and Foreign Languages teacher. Her career spanned some forty years in New Zealand and Australia. Finding Miriama is her first novel, having started it in 2018, when family members convinced her that her ancestors’ story, if told well, could make an interesting read. Five years of historical research later, coupled with a little poetic licence and imagination, the novel was completed. The sequel, ‘Of Greenstone and Violins’ was released in 2025.
Donna still divides her time between her birthplace in Tauranga, New Zealand, and Brisbane, Australia, where her close family all live. In both places she can be found on a beach or somewhere small and intimate listening to live jazz.
Finding Miriama
It is 2003 in New Zealand, and Louisa Greenwood and her daughter Ngaroma are on a quest to discover their ancestry.
One hundred and fifty years earlier, Major Joseph Greenwood, with his wife Catherine, is sent via India and England to New Zealand as a Fencible.
Finding Miriama centres around the subject of identity, chasing dreams and self-determination, set against a background of war in Afghanistan and Maori-Pakeha relations in colonial New Zealand.
HISTORICAL FICTION
ISBN 9780473671549
Paperback – 385 pages
150mm x 230mm
RRP $25 • Wholesale prices available
Of Greenstone and Violins
Victorian New Zealand sets the stage for an extraordinary story of two brothers bound by blood but divided by empire. Their unlikely bond challenges the rigid social boundaries of their era, proving that the heart knows no borders.
The story began with ‘Finding Miriama’, and explores how the choices of our ancestors echo through time.
HISTORICAL FICTION
ISBN 978-0-473-74004-7
Paperback – 353 pages
150mm x 230mm
RRP $25 • Wholesale prices available
Donna’s books are available through Wheelers or direct from the author.