This is an amazing achievement by Peter Wells - finding, researching and bringing together a wealth of sources to explore such a key topic in New Zealand history.

Like his other book on Colenso it is eminently readable. Indeed Colenso features in this book as well and emerges as a balanced and even-handed man in spite of all that he had personally suffered.

Colonial New Zealand, its levels of government and the legal system don't come out of this account well. Neither do the churches for that matter.

By the end of the book I felt it was a book about Kereopa Te Rau - it is easy to forget that the first half is about the Rev. Carl Sylvius Volkner - an Anglican missionary at Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty. Of course Wells actually does arrange his writing into two books. It is testament to his writing and research that one has almost forgotten the person of Volkner and his wife Emma. She left New Zealand in 1866 the year after Volkner's death. It would have been fascinating to read what she might have said, thought or wrote about the hanging of Kereopa Te Rau.

Kereopa was posthumously pardoned as part of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement in 2014. Wells says p.145 that Kereopa was a minor prophet of the new faith Pai Marire. Te Ara - the New Zealand Encyclopedia says that Kereopa Te Rau was one of the five original disciples of Te Ua Haumene, the founder of Pai Marire. Te Ara also notes that Kereopa is a transliteration of the biblical name Cleophas. - the name given to him when he was baptised by Fr Reignier.

It has a really useful index and is well illustrated; indeed the illustrations add a dimension that Wells seems to feel he wasn't able to give through his writing. I am referring to his photos of the sea, of the beach and its stones. ( )