This posthumous and previously unpublished collection of poetry by award-winning New Zealand poet Kendrick Smithyman traces the poet's family history from its apparent origins in Shropshire, England. Along the way, readers are introduced to a colorful cast of characters, including one Smithyman who was taken prisoner after a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia; one born in colonial 19th-century Fiji; another who served in India; and a family of Smithymans who landed in the gumfields of New Zealand. The poems both illustrate the shock of family myth meeting historical reality and provide an idiosyncratic, amusing, and moving account of colonial and postcolonial New Zealand.