New Zealand at the time of the Land Wars, through the eyes of a fearless critic: Thomas Grace, immovable champion of the Maori people, who knew him as Te Kerehi. A friend of Te Kooti, he sympathised with the Hauhau 'fanatics' and the King movement. He led his family on an epic wartime trek from Taupo to the sea, and later journeyed alone in hostile Maori territory. He opposed land sales and encouraged Maori enterprise. He attacked exploitation, injustice and indifference wherever he saw it: miserly fees for grazing Maori land, atrocities committed by imperial troops, poor pay and rotten flour for Maori road-building gangs, missionaries buying up land and turning to European service ... the list goes on. Grace irritated the Government, outraged the settlers and embarrassed the mission. Some even said he should have hanged at Opotiki in place of the Reverend Carl Volkner. Yet his energy, compassion and many of his far-sighted ideas ring well in the 21st Century. This is the first publication of much of Grace's writing. It is strong and passionate, but the book has a gentler side. His wife Agnes - "Mother" to the Maori - shared the building of the isolated Taupo mission. On the brink of war, she and her children were often alone in hardship and danger. Gentler too are Grace's accounts of his journeys: hazards on the way, the scattered and often starving people, delight in meeting old friends and the courage of Pompey, his beloved horse.