The many bays, coves and steeply rising hills of the Marlborough Sounds create some of New Zealand’s most glorious, but challenging, environments.Maori carved out a living there over hundreds of years, but as Pakeha settlers farmed, milled, mined, fished and chased the tourist dollar they transformed the Sounds. Maori lost their land, language and way of life. Both groups had to overcome obstacles that ranged from the merely difficult to the nearly impossible, but Maori faced additional systemic legal and economic barriers.History continues to play out here in complex ways — Maori and Pakeha, land and sea, boom and bust, locals and tourists. These multiple strands are brought together for the first time in a wide-ranging, engrossing and richly illustrated account of the Sounds and its resourceful and resilient peoples.