KEY POINTS:
A high-country love story has won the Booksellers' Choice Award.
The award for Road to Castle Hill, A High Country Love Story, by Christine Fernyhough with Louise Callan, was announced during the Booksellers Conference in Wellington last night.
The award was decided by booksellers who vote for the book they most enjoyed selling this year.
Castle Hill has been in the top 200 bestsellers for 40 weeks, and was the best-selling book on the shortlist of 10.
The book tells of the highs and lows of learning to run a farm at some of the highest elevations in the South Island.
Fernyhough, speaking yesterday before the awards were announced, said she did not realise how popular Castle Hill would be.
"It must have captured all sorts of people, in particular the booksellers themselves. Without them you just stand on shelves, so it's their promotion and displaying and reading it themselves and talking about it."
The one-time Remuera philanthropist said she had had hundreds of letters from readers.
"It must have touched a lot of chords."
The award was hugely important for the readers of the book and in particular those who told her they seldom read books.
"If they see the book they choose winning an award it sort of reinforces to them 'I'm a good chooser of books', and there's more encouragement to buy more."
Since the book was released, Fernyhough has been busy promoting it and speaking to groups about her experiences.
"People are so responsive, wanting to know about farming, DoC, how I'm still managing - it's just a pleasure."
Fernyhough has had a busy year. A heifer left her with a badly broken leg, she had a record-breaking drought to deal with, and she got married in April to her business partner and the book's photographer, John Bougen, at the Castle Hill dog trials.
The Road to Castle Hill has been reprinted three times since its first appearance last October and almost 23,000 copies have been sold.
- NZPA
