Heir to a Family Business, Janet November
Published by Mary Egan Publishing
30 April 2026
PB, 264pp, RRP$32.00
ISBN: 978-1-991436-05-4
In 1971, Will, reluctant heir to his parents’ Banks Peninsula farm, plans to travel overseas with his girlfriend, Polly, after he finishes college. Instead, while his father is ill, Will must take over the management of the family farm. It’s not long before father and son clash. Will wants to mechanise and modernise the farm, but his old-school father opposes his new ideas. His mother understands that Will prefers engines to sheep.
Attractive Polly, a city girl, goes overseas without him. Her flirting soon becomes obvious to Will, yet he loves her lively spirit. Can their engagement lead to marriage, or is there another woman who would be a loving, supportive wife for a farmer with a passion for engines?
Readers of coming-of-age romances, family conflict novels, and stories exploring the effects of historical events and environmental issues on the lives of ordinary people will enjoy this novel.
“This is a very New Zealand, down-to-earth story about a farming family on the Banks Peninsula, that really captures this way of life.”
About the author
Born and educated in England, Janet November graduated in Russian from Nottingham University in 1968 and worked for the British Council before her husband's job took the family to Massachusetts, where she worked in a nursery school. Her first book, The Story of a Home Playgroup (non-fiction), was published by George Allen & Unwin, London, in 1980, with a Spanish edition published by Morata, translated by Juana Sancho.
In 1981, Janet emigrated to Melbourne with her husband and two children, graduating LLB from Melbourne University in 1984. The family moved to Wellington in 1987. While working for the law courts and the New Zealand Law Commission until 2010, she wrote three legal texts (published by Butterworths, 1999–2001) and a biography of New Zealand's first woman lawyer, In the Footsteps of Ethel Benjamin, published by Victoria University of Wellington Press for the Law Foundation NZ in 2009.
After retiring to Waiheke Island in 2011, she wrote The Herstory of OWLS, a history of the Otago Women Lawyers Society, produced at their request in 2019.
Heir to a Family Business is Janet's first published work of fiction.
For review copies, interview requests or media enquiries, please contact:
Kate Gordon-Smith
021 587227
kate@relishcommunications.co.nz