The Story of a New Zealand River: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Story of a New Zealand River, credited to Jane Mander, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander. Read in English by Gail Timmerman Vaughan "This is the land of the lost, one of those happy spots where no questions are asked. Of course, the fact of a person's being here is usually all the explanation necessary." The Story of a New Zealand River is a romance set in the Northland region of New Zealand, in the time when the forests of New Zealand's grandest tree, the kauri, were being logged for their exquisite timber. The novel begins as Alice Roland and her free-spirited daughter Asia are being rowed in a black punt by handsome and cultured David Bruce up the Kaipara harbour to their new home at a raw kauri logging settlement in a bend of the Kaiwaka river. Tom Roland, a rough colonial and the boss of the settlement, is Alice's husband of a few years. Alice is a beautiful but tight-laced, proud, puritanical Englishwoman whose mismatch with Tom Roland is not a happy one. They arrive with Alice's piano among their belongings to find a half-built cottage, a strange collection of inhabitants, from gentry to scoundrels, and a place that is beautiful and challenging. Jane Mander was a New Zealand novelist and journalist. As well as New Zealand, she also lived in Sydney, New York and London. There is a superficial resemblance between The Story of a New Zealand River and the Jane Campion film The Piano, which is principally the setting and the piano. (summary by Gail Timmerman-Vaughan)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Story of a New Zealand River
• Author credits: Jane Mander
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 35
• Listed recording duration: 12:24:08

Opening tracks: first 24 of 35

1. 01 - CHAPTER I — 37:21
2. 02 - CHAPTER II — 23:33
3. 03 - CHAPTER III — 20:29
4. 04 - CHAPTER IV — 31:46
5. 05 - CHAPTER V — 19:58
6. 06 - CHAPTER VI — 14:06
7. 07 - CHAPTER VII — 9:50
8. 08 - CHAPTER VIII — 29:47
9. 09 - CHAPTER IX — 31:00
10. 10 - CHAPTER X — 21:58
11. 11 - CHAPTER XI — 43:18
12. 12 - CHAPTER XII — 21:48
13. 13 - CHAPTER XIII — 11:51
14. 14 - CHAPTER XIV — 30:33
15. 15 - CHAPTER XV — 19:53
16. 16 - CHAPTER XVI — 19:32
17. 17 - CHAPTER XVII — 15:59
18. 18 - CHAPTER XVIII — 8:27
19. 19 - CHAPTER XIX — 21:10
20. 20 - CHAPTER XX — 17:13
21. 21 - CHAPTER XXI — 13:00
22. 22 - CHAPTER XXII — 4:00
23. 23 - CHAPTER XXIII — 7:07
24. 24 - CHAPTER XXIV — 29:42

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.