By Sonya Wilson
A million hectares of wild bush-clad land and one young hunter…
Nissa Marshall knows that something is hiding deep in the forests of Fiordland National Park — she’s seen their lights in the trees.
But what are they, and why does no one else seem to notice them?
When Nissa abandons her school camp to track down the mysterious lights, she finds herself lost in a dangerous wonderland.
And she’s not the only one at risk — the forest and the creatures in it are under threat too.
She wants to help, but what can a school kid do where adults have failed?
And can she find her way back? In Fiordland, the lost usually stay lost.
Yes, they are. Quintin McKinnon, Pukutahi and Johann Forster were all real people. In Spark Hunter, the letter about McKinnon's disappearance, the articles Josh finds in class about the others who went missing, the diary entries that Nissa reads to Kaha - they are all real documents. Some of the news reports are based on real events, too. There was, for example, a big earthquake in Fiordland in 2009 that really did cause hundreds of summit-to-valley slips, and really did make the water in Doubtful Sound 'slosh around like it was a bathtub.'
In The Secret Green, Donald Sutherland and Ernest Wilmot were real people, too. Hera is a made up character, but the event her story is based on really did happen in Southland in the 1850s or 60s. The diary entries in Ernest's section were written by him during a survey of the Manapouri / Dusky area in 1897. Some of Donald's turns of phrase I've borrowed from news reports and interviews written by him or with him at the time.
I'm glad you asked! There are so many interesting people and places in Fiordland, so many stories (both true and not-quite true), so I would really encourage you to do some digging for yourself and see what else you can find out about the people and places mentioned in my book. Fiordland really is one of the world's last great wildernesses, and we should, I think, do our best to both understand it and to protect it. Here's some of the books that helped me with my research for Spark Hunter. Some of them are pretty old but you might be able to track down a copy of some of these if you are keen:
Some of the other's that were of particular use to me in The Secret Green included:
Tamatea Dusky by Peta Carey, Bird Stories by Geoff Norman, Six-Legged Ghosts by Lily Duval, Treasures of Tane by Rob Tipa, Fungi of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson, Farthest West by AH and AW Reed, The Forgotten Forest by Robert Vennell, Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Māori by James Herries Beattie, Minerals and Gems of Māoriland by WM Campbell, The Treaty of Waitangi and the Ngai Tahu Claim by the Ngai Tahu Trust Board, as well as all those books you can see in the picture above.
I borrowed lots of turns of phrases from some of those old books written about Fiordland for my historic characters, and for the sparks' dialogue. And I was very inspired by some of the ideas about nature and the environment that I read about in books by amazing scientist-writers like Suzanne Simard, David George Haskell, Peter Wohlleben and Robert Macfarlane. Some of the sparks' views on life and forest can be traced back to these wonderful books.
There's a swathe of great information available online too, of course.
I found the Papers Past website great for finding old articles written about the mysteries of Fiordland:
National Library's Papers Past - The Otago Witness
Ngāi Tahu's website is good for a bit of local history, too. Their Kā Huru Manu project is really cool - it's an atlas showing all of the original Māori names for the rivers, lakes and settlements in Te Wai Pounamu; zoom into Fiordland and you can see not only what places were named, but why:
Kā Huru Manu, Ngāi Tahu's cultural mapping project
If you are visiting Fiordland National Park and want to do a walk or two (which you absolutely should) a good place to start is the Department of Conservation website:
If you want to find out more about kākāpō or donate to recovery efforts:
You can find out more about other New Zealand birds (even the ones that are now extinct) here:
If you are in Southland, I recommend visiting the Southland Museum in Invercargill and the Fiordland National Park Visitor Centre.
Yes! It's called The Secret Green and it's being published by Allen & Unwin on the 1st of July 2025. The sparks defiantly weren't finished with Nissa, and this time, Tama is going back to Fiordland, too ...
Yes! I love visiting readers at their schools. You can ask your teacher to contact me through the contact page on this website to ask about an author visit.
No. I live in Auckland at the moment but I did grow up in Southland. I went to school in Invercargill (just like Nissa), went to school camp in Deep Cove (just like Nissa), and every year I went camping in Manapōuri and Te Anau with my family (just like Nissa does, too).
I still love the place, and visit there as often as I can, usually once or twice a year. I've written about Fiordland for a few different publications. You can find some of those articles in the 'press' section of this site.
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