Castle on the Run (Earnscleugh Station Homestead). By Gay McInnes. 1969, SCARCE first edition.

Castle on the Run by Gay McInnes.

Publisher: Pegasus, New Zealand, 1969, SCARCE first edition.

Very good hardback with jacket. No inscriptions, binding firm, slight lean to spine, light foxing to end-papers and edges. Jacket has slight fading to spine and a little edge wear, minor marks.

Castle on the Run is a woman's cool but loving look over her shoulder at a girl growing up in the big brick homestead on the celebrated Earnscleugh station in Central Otago. She remembers verandah cushions stuffed with rose petals, cascades of wisteria that drove honey bees wild and brought sightseers from far and near. But this is not another account of picturesque back country life - though heaven knows there was pioneering enough when Grandfather Spain first took up some seventy thousand acres of abandoned sheep country, it's bare hills moving with rabbits. By the 1930's Earnscleugh's hey-day was fading. A brick wall split both house and family; just as the child's lonely world was divided between golden days running wild and the stern routine of a convent school. Here is a brilliantly sharp sensitive picture of real people and places, observed with affectionate candour.

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