Mysterious Backwoodsman Tai Haruru steals the heart of middle aged Victorian wife

 

I discovered Elizabeth Goudge about thirteen years ago from a friend who loaned me several books. She's amazing! I adore her nature imagery and striking characters. She also does a great job of portraying relational ties that are complex. For example, in this story, (spoiler alert) two sisters are in love with the same man. He has differing types of affection for each and the characters alternate between friendship and other more intense types of connections with others whilst staying true to their marital vows. 

The story takes place in both the channel islands and New Zealand. The male protagonist is a bit of a blunder bust. He reminds me of some Dickens "heroes" who are forever mishandling things and it's infuriating. Because he's so likeable, stronger characters such as his eventual wife Marianne - who's a woman "born out of time" of her Victorian context, and my favorite character Tai Haruru, originally Timothy Haslan in a different life, an an enigmatic adventurer who mentors and befriends the hapless William and directs his enterprises:

"Yet there was one man who seemed to be not quite of this company, though utterly at home in it. He sat opposite William, looking at him with interest. He was silent, yet without movement or speech he dominated the whole room. ....So of the earth was he that he looked more like a tree than a man, one of those tough old pine trees that nothing in the way of weather except a thunderbolt will ever get the better of. he was immensely strong and vigorous. His eyes were dark and somber but as full of vitality as the curly, grizzled hair at his temples. His skin was the color of old oak, so roughened and seamed by exposure to weather that the scar of an old wound that cut across his head and ran down one side of his face was barely noticeable...."

Tai Haruru as he is called by the Maori people ends up being a strategic protector of William but also of Marianne who eventually joins him in New Zealand, leaving behind a sorrowful Marguerite, more of a Diana (Anne of Green Gables) type of person who eventually becomes a nun. The three have a dramatic reconciliation on the islands in their sunset years. (William, Marguerite, and Marianne). Tai is left where he should be left in the wilds of New Zealand where no one knows of his demise or survival. All is shrouded in the mystery akin to that of his past.