A Place Made for You?

The Hokonui hills of Murihiku have been an essential part of John Paul Ryan’s sense of identity since he was a boy growing up on a Southland farm. This modest-seeming landscape, so unlike the internationally famous tourist drawcards of nearby Queenstown or Fiordland, has always called to him even when he has lived far away.

In A Place Made for You?, Ryan explores this connection. Drawing on theology, philosophy, archival research and his own observations while walking the hills, he traces the many ways people have interacted with the Hokonui over time, from the foundational and ongoing presence of mana whenua to twenty-first-century farming and forestry.

The result is an absorbing, elegantly written and distinctive perspective on how we understand and relate to the landscapes we inhabit, and a meditation on the possibility of a right relationship with the more-than-human world.