Donna Goodacre, who is of Waikato 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.
She started her first novel, Finding Miriama, 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, it was completed. The sequel, Of Greenstone and Violins, published in 2025, took only one year after her retirement from full-time teaching. The third book in the series, Our Unbroken Spirits, was published in April 2026.
Donna still divides her time between her birthplace in Tauranga, New Zealand, and Brisbane, Australia, where her close family lives. In both places she can be found on a beach or somewhere small and intimate, listening to live jazz.
A family saga set in NZ and England, this story traces whānau across generations and cultures, blending rich historical detail with emotional storytelling and mysteries that connect past and present.
Lucy Chappell has already survived one great love and one great loss. Now, as the 1890s unfold, she must raise Hōhepa’s children, navigate a changing country, and welcome unlikely new alliances—including the enigmatic hairdresser Charles Patterson, whose past carries more shadows than he reveals.
Across the world, artist Colin Greenwood struggles to rebuild his life in Eastbourne after losing his partner, Josh. When Charles arrives with difficult questions, long-buried connections resurface.
Through it all, Wiremu—elder, mentor, peacemaker—guides the next generation, preparing his son Wiri for an uncertain future as the world moves toward war.
In the present day, Ngaroma follows the trail of her ancestors, uncovering secrets and discovering that the past is never as distant as it seems.
From Hamilton to Kāwhia and beyond, The Spirit Remains is a powerful story of loss and resilience, of whānau across generations, and of the pounamu that carries their unbroken story forward. Even when histories are hidden, some bonds refuse to fade, and spirits endure.
Book 3 of the Our Unbroken Spirits series. These books can be read as standalone novels.
Continuing the story begun in Finding Miriama – this historical novel explores how the choices of our ancestors echo through time.
In the shadows of London’s Highgate Cemetery, Ngaroma stands before her great-great-grandfather’s crypt, unknowingly about to unravel a tale that spans two centuries and two hemispheres.
Victorian New Zealand sets the stage for an extraordinary story of two brothers bound by blood but divided by empire. Hōhepa, born to a British captain and a Māori mother, navigates a precarious path between two worlds during a time of mounting colonial tensions. Meanwhile, in England, his half-brother Colin, a gifted landscape painter, confronts the suffocating constraints of Victorian society as he struggles to live authentically in a world that denies his true nature and desires. Their unlikely bond challenges the rigid social boundaries of their era, proving that the heart knows no borders.
Now, in 2010, Ngaroma’s discovery in that London cemetery will bridge the generations, revealing how love, sacrifice, and forgiveness shaped her family’s legacy across oceans and decades. Based on the author’s own family history, this richly woven narrative continues the story begun in ‘Finding Miriama’, exploring how the choices of our ancestors echo through time.
Explore the powerful journey of identity and chasing dreams in this gripping historical novel.
It is 2003 in New Zealand, and Louisa Greenwood and her daughter Ngaroma are on a quest to discover their ancestry. Louisa has a greenstone necklace left to her in her father’s will, and from the first time Ngaroma wears it, she has unusual experiences, both good and bad. It leads her to various locations in New Zealand and England until, through a series of meetings and coincidences, she discovers the final resting place of her five times great grandmother.
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. The couple becomes established in Auckland society and all goes well until Joseph, one drunken night, fathers a son to Miriama Potiki, their live-in housekeeper. What follows is a series of challenges involving the Greenwoods, their friends and family, on both sides of the world, and the ramifications are felt by Louisa and Ngaroma five generations later.
Finding Miriama is about identity, chasing dreams and self-determination: a compelling story set against the background of the the first Anglo-Afghan War and Māori-Pakeha relations in colonial New Zealand.
Donna’s books are available through Wheelers or direct from the author.