New Zealand filmmaker Bennett’s first novel, Better the Blood: A Hana Westerman Thriller (Atlantic Monthly, Jan.), explores the prolonged effects of 19th-century wounds perpetrated by the British military on the Maori people.
A description of an 1863 daguerreotype of a Maori chief being hanged by six British soldiers opens the book. Was this an actual image you found?
No, but it’s based upon accounts of the theft of Maori land and the destruction of Maori lives and identity during the British colonialization of New Zealand in the 19th century. I became aware of these accounts belatedly, for as schoolchildren, we weren’t taught Maori history; we were taught British history and American history.
How do you see your filmmaking influencing Better the Blood?
My first foray into writing was a nonfiction account, In Dark Places, about a wrongful conviction. A young man with a daughter to support was involved in various illegal activities for a gang. When a reward of $20,000 was offered for information about a murder, the young man approached the police, falsely claiming to know something about it. They interrogated him without a lawyer for five days straight. By the end, he had confessed to the murder, and he was convicted and spent 21 years in prison. I took that as the subject for my first book and then for a film of the same title. Thematically, Better the Blood has similar themes concerning injustice and reparation. The other link from this book to my filmmaking is the pace at which events unfold. Just as in a film, you keep the plot moving; you never want to let the reader’s attention wander.
Why did you make your protagonist, detective Hana Westerman, a woman?
As I was developing the book, I shared some of my ideas with my partner, Jane, and she felt my protagonist ought to be a woman. Hana Westerman became a composite of many of the strong women in my life—my aunts, my mother, my partner, my daughters. And my mother’s last name is Westerman.
You introduce the Maori concept of utu, which refers to a certain kind of justice but has no equivalent word in English. Could you explain it?
Utu isn’t about simple vengeance; rather, it seeks to heal, to put things back into balance. Most important is that we not ignore the wound, and colonialization caused wounds that are still felt today. The work I most admire tackles issues surrounding pain and humanity, and I am humbled at the idea that although I’ve told a tale so specific to my culture, it resonates with people elsewhere and has a certain amount of universality.
