Outskirts Press, INC.

In writing Kiwi Country, author John Sager relies on his recollections of visiting that enchanting country four times during the 1980s. An avid fly fisherman, the author’s principal character is of the same mind and skill set. But he is also an experienced private investigator who soon finds himself helping the local authorities break up a drug-running operation, a cattle rustling scheme and identifying a killer. The story illuminates a little-understood topic in contemporary literature: the indigenous Maori culture, a Polynesian peoples who were the first South Pacific inhabitants to discover and settle New Zealand. And, Kiwi Country is something of a travelogue, allowing the reader to enjoy, vicariously, some of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions: Dunedin’s Royal Albatross colony, the Pukeiti rhododendron gardens, the Franz Joseph glacier helicopter hike, the Waitomo Glow-Worm caves and the country’s World War I museum, featuring the infamous Battle of Gallipoli.