Mauriceville record highly readable

GOOD READ: A typical page with a good bite of text and plenty of photographs.

Mauriceville is one of those rare places that quickly wins a place in the hearts of those who visit and whose history, based on a legacy of hard graft, continues to captivate writers and historians alike.

Rainbows over Mauriceville has just gone on the market, an impressively prepared and very readable record of the faces, buildings and events that shaped the pioneer settlement featuring stories from relatives of the pioneers and those who remain citizens of Mauriceville.

It has been produced by the Friends of Mauriceville and edited by Dr Kay Flavell, now living in the United States, but who was for years the director and driving force behind New Pacific Studio at Mt Bruce.

Rainbows over Mauriceville is stacked with photographs, many of which have never been previously published and the text is easy reading as it concentrates on small bites rather than lengthy chapters.

As Mauriceville was largely settled by Scandinavian immigrants its history has a distinctly different flavour to those written about the early settlement of other towns and districts that became home to folks from Britain.

That said, not all settlers of Mauriceville were Scandinavian.

Some of them were from England, in fact, including my own great-grandfather.

Rainbows over Mauriceville is likewise not concerned exclusively with Mauriceville's settlement but extends its boundaries of interest to include the neighbouring settlements of Kopuaranga, Mangamahoe and Hastwell.

Of those, readers of the book may find items of special interest in the Hastwell stories as very little has been published about Hastwell in the past.

Rainbows over Mauriceville is not likely to be marketed through bookstores as the Friends of Mauriceville have printed off a first run of 400 and they have been selling steadily through members of the organisation itself and Scandinavian societies through New Zealand.

The book was on display, and available, for sale at the Mauriceville Fair last weekend and was snapped up at $45 a copy.

Rainbows over Mauriceville is not Friends of Mauriceville's first publishing venture as the group earlier published the successful booklet Whispering Roads, which highlights a Scandinavian trail running shore-to-shore between Wellington and Napier.

People wanting more information or wishing to purchase Rainbows over Mauriceville can go to www.info@scandinaviantrail.org.nz