SYNOPSIS (Story Development)

The Captive Wife (Vintage)

The idea for ‘The Captive Wife’ came to me about 10 years ago when I was researching an article for New Zealand Geographic magazine about the Cook Strait area. I had heard the story of Betty Guard many years earlier, from my husband Ian, who had worked as a school teacher on Arapawa Island. Visiting the area brought that story to life in my imagination.

As usual, I had a whole pile of stories and commitments waiting in the queue to be told. I knew this one would take a great deal of research and I kept putting it off. But in 2003, I successfully applied for a grant from Creative New Zealand, which afforded me the time to visit the several places where the story took place, including Sydney, and the pa sites on the Taranaki coastline, before setting to work on writing the novel.

I toyed with several structures, and finally opted for a method by which Jacky and Betty could each tell their stories in the first person. Jacky’s story is told in the form of a journal, in much the same way that I imagine he would have kept logbooks. In fact, he left no written records behind.

For Betty, I invented an imaginary friend in the guise of Adie Malcolm, her school teacher at the Rocks in Sydney. I liked Adie’s eager, waspish voice and offered a great opportunity to explore what Sydney was like in the 1830's.