Set in mid-nineteenth-century New Zealand, it is a semi-fictionalized account of the story of the Māori leader Te Kooti, told from the perspective of one of his pursuers, an officer in the colonial army.
The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.” This lays the moral ground for the resistance of the band of New Zealand natives under their leader Te Kooti, who synthesized a new religion from Christian and Māori traditions combined with his study of the Old Testament.
In the novel the rebels are often simply referred to as “the Jews.” The religion Te Kooti created, the Ringatu Church, still claims around 15,000 adherents in New Zealand today.
In this story of New Zealand and Te Kooti's War during the year beginning November 10, 1868, the narrative coalesces around the development of its protagonist, George Fairweather, who in Shadbolt's historical epilogue is described as “A composite character ... yet still far from fictional.” Fairweather is a competent but cynical former British officer in his early forties, who leaves the service under a cloud, turns landscape painter and cultivates an air of worldly detachment.
In the end, he almost throws his future away by struggling to save a Māori boy, Hamiora, who, like Melville's Billy Budd, was unjustly charged with treason.