Known for her historical fiction, Jenny Pattrick is one of New Zealand's best-selling novelists but she says her latest novel Harbouring may be her last.
Photo: Deanna Walker / Supplied
She has had 10 novels published since her acclaimed 2003 debut The Denniston Rose, yet Pattrick came to be published quite late in life. Prior to becoming an author, Pattrick had an active professional life in the arts including 35 years as an acclaimed jeweller known for her work in silver using pāua, pounamu, and natural fibres.
Pattrick was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts back in 1989. She recently started blogging on her website jenny-pattrick.com.
Now aged 85 Pattrick's latest novel Harbouring brings her interest in history close to her Wellington home. Set during the time of the New Zealand Company settlement of Te Whanganui-a-Tara in 1839, it focuses on the stories of three characters all desperate for a better life, two Welsh and one Māori.
Pattrick said she enjoys doing the research necessary for her novels.
"So much ... has been written by historians about the early, about the settlement of Wellington and about ... the Wakefields and the tribal chiefs that I felt it was wiser for me maybe to write about people at the bottom of the heap, not much had been written, so I wasn't treading on other people's toes."
Pattrick said it was coincidental that she chose the two Pākehā settlers in the novel to be Welsh.
"I wanted them to be more or less destitute, as I think many of those early settlers, not the land-owning ones, but the ones who were brought out ... [who] had to pay back their passage when they got here, they were often people who were desperate."
Pattrick agreed there is a parallel between what the Welsh experienced at the hands of wealthy English landowners and what Māori experienced at the hands of the settlers.
She said she tries to ensure the actual history in her books is accurate, but enjoys creating fictional characters within her historical novels.
"In all the books that I've written that are historical ones I tend to make the real historical people background characters and always have the main characters fictional out of my head, so I can make them do what I like and put a good story in around the real historical stuff."
The 85-year-old said Harbouring may well be her last book.
"I've had two good careers already, I mean the jewelling one and the writing one, and I know by the time your book comes out, which is now it's just out now, that's a good year since I first sent the manuscript draft up to the publishers.
"I should have another book well on the way by now but I haven't and so I'm thinking 'why haven't I? Has that fire gone out now, is it time to start a new career? Or is it time to just be a grandmother and a great-grandmother which I am now.'"
She said she has got a couple of ideas for a new book, but it has not happened yet.
Pattrick said her debut novel The Denniston Rose was rejected by publishers many times.
"I was absolutely on the point of not going on, of going back to the jewellery bench, when finally Random House and my dear editor Harriet Allan decided that they would take a punt on New Zealand historical fiction because New Zealanders just didn't read their own historical fiction.
"They decided they'd give it a go and they made a very small print run and then the bookshops began taking it and taking it and taking it and by the time the launch date came it had been reprinted five times."
The book came out in 2003 and Pattrick said she was lucky because it was just the time when New Zealanders were ready to read their own stories.
Pattrick's husband Laughton who was a musician, died a year and a half ago.
"We had a wonderful 37 years together and we were sort of made for each other, but we had plenty of time to get used to the fact that he was going to die because he had motor neurone disease and he had it for 10 years."
She said the only time she saw her husband cry was when he could no longer play the piano due to the disease.
But Pattrick said Laughton never lost the capacity to speak prior to his death, which many who have motor neurone disease do.
Pattrick started writing Harbouring when Laughton was sick, but said she was not able to complete it as her husband's illness progressed and it took her more time to care for him.
But she said in those initial stages of her writing it, he was very encouraging.
Photo: Deanna Walker
