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The little known story of Auckland’s Dalmatian community is the backdrop for The Way to Spell Love, a memoir by Whangateau-based author Nina Nola, launched last week.
Although the book focuses on Nola’s “powerhouse” father Steve Nola, of the F.S. Nola and Sons orcharding family from Henderson, she says it is also a celebration of the Dalmatian spirit of laughter, passion, family, loyalty and endurance.
“Dad was the centre of our family’s world and when he died, we had to learn, as a family, to put ourselves back together,” she says. “I don’t think it’s an uncommon story.”
Nola spent her first eight years on the family-run orchards, before her father decided to forge a new life on a vineyard in Pukekohe. The book is an attempt to understand both her father and the culture that made him.
“My father was a patriarch with high expectations of his family and the rules we had to live by were drawn from the Croatian culture he knew.
“Her mother was from the Adriatic island of Hvar and her father’s parents were from Podgora on the mainland, so although we were Kiwi-born, we lived and breathed our Croatian heritage. I’ve visited Croatia almost every year since I was 20, usually accompanied by my mother who is now 86.”
There are more than 100,000 New Zealanders of Croatian heritage, but Nola says very little has been written about their lives or their legacy.
She says writing the book was a cathartic experience, which helped her process her father’s final days, her siblings’ responses and some of the difficult processes they have had to navigate.
Her next novel is already in the pipeline, a story based on her mother’s World War II experiences as a refuge at El Shatt on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. It is expected to be published next year.
Nola will be at the Mahurangi East Library on November 21, from 2pm to 3pm, for a “meet the author” event. She will also be giving a public talk on the Dalmatian New Zealand writer Amelia Batistch, which she did her PhD on, at Mahurangi East Library on December 8.
The Way to Spell Love, published by The Cuba Press, is available from Paper Plus in Warkworth and The Women’s Bookshop in Ponsonby.
