The Colour of Our Country

The Coming Together Years

By: John Sargeant

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Keen to break away from a life of co-dependency with her drug dependent boyfriend in Christchurch, Gina Stewart makes the courageous effort to leave him for one final time. She quits her job, throws her meagre possessions into her aging sports car and travels to Wellington to seek sanctuary with her sister, Deb.
The two could not be any more different as Deb, a research doctor, is confidently single, a successful concert pianist and popular with everybody, while Gina is penniless, aimless and becoming more angry with the world for the poor decisions she feels she was forced into. Decisions which saw her selling drugs through a local supermarket, to a terrible, dark and now toxic decision she had buried in the back of her mind, a malevolent secret she couldn't even admit to herself.
The two women clash, but blood is thicker than water and they, along with third sister Annette are brought together by a family crisis. Now fully involved in what is a remarkably successful and wealthy family, Gina thought she would feel wanted but the reality is far from that as despite being home, she’s now even more lonely and desperate to claim a life she can call her own. The opportunity is unwittingly given to her by a complete stranger in a fish and chip shop at Mokau as she offers the hand of friendship and is rewarded with the glimmer of a chance to face life on her own terms.
Working in the vineyards of Martinborough and far away from family pressures, Gina blossoms into the person she always wanted to become; but as her star ascends, Deb’s is fast declining as her workplace becomes an arena where the politically powerful take precedence over practicality and professionalism. It is now Deb who turns to Gina for support with surprising results as she struggles to find a life outside of her career, but with the help of a long-dead Russian woman named ‘Marlene’, and a chance meeting with Giorgia Moretti, a part Italian, part Māori businesswoman and fashionista, she starts on the pathway to change.
This is the sixth book in the series ‘The Colour of Our Country and continues to mesh the Stewarts, the Dalgleish's, and the Flemings as the fourth generation make their mark on New Zealand by standing on the shoulders of those who have come before. Set in New Zealand's Wellington, Mokau and New Plymouth as well as London and Italy, this is above all, a story of family, of conflict and compromise where one generation stands down as another takes up the reins and the transition is less than expected.