There he marries Nancy Foreland, a young widow with a new baby, and it seems they've both found happiness in the midst of their mourning-until Henry's first wife and children show up, alive and having finally escaped captivity. Grief-stricken, he books passage to California.

Their new home is rougher and more rustic than they expected-and a single night of tragedy shatters the family when the native Maori stage an uprising, kidnapping Margaret and her children.įor months, Henry scours the surrounding wilderness, until all hope is lost and his wife and children are presumed dead. But while Henry is an adventurer, Margaret is not. Based on a California court case noted by Johanna Moran’s father, The Wives of Henry Oades is a fine story of family, marriage, and commitment set in exotic New Zealand and California amid the changes at the turn of the 20th century.When Henry Oades accepts an accountancy post in New Zealand, his wife, Margaret, and their children follow him to exotic Wellington. There are no villains here unless it is the communities first the one that kidnaps Margaret, and then the intolerant community of Berkeley that makes the Oades’s lives unbearable. Henry and his two wives are each sympathetic, authentically portrayed characters. If these difficulties were not enough, the community turns on Henry and he is prosecuted for bigamy. Henry and Nancy have been married a matter of months when Henry’s first family appears on their doorstep. Worn and bedraggled, and scarred with the marks of disease, first wife Margaret and her children make their way to Berkeley, California. When disease strikes the tribe, they are at last cast out and John, the eldest, leads them back to Wellington. Meanwhile Margaret and her surviving children endure a six-year enslavement with the Maori. He marries Nancy, who has suffered a similar loss. Henry is prevented from searching for them, and as his lawyer later states in the second of three court cases, he leaves New Zealand, “loath to remain amid the sorrowful memories.”Ĭircumstances change Henry’s profession from accountant to dairyman. In an act of retribution, she and her children are taken captive by a Maori tribe. Margaret insists on a cottage on the outskirts of the squalid town of Wellington.

Henry and Margaret Oades move from London to New Zealand with their four children in 1890. The Wives of Henry Oades is an engrossing late 19th-century tale of unwitting bigamy.

The wives of henry oades book review