Curse of Nakaa: Land Matang

CURSE OF NAKAABanaba, 1931. A small Pacific island. A people about to lose everything.When the White family arrives on Ocean Island, they step into a world unlike any other - a place where colonial ambition and ancient tradition collide beneath the relentless machinery of a phosphate empire. For the Banaban people, the island is not just home; it is the resting place of their ancestors, the keeper of their stories, the source of their very identity. But the land is being stripped away, acre by sacred acre, and an old warning grows louder with each passing year: Curse of Nakaa has not been lifted.As the world tips toward war, the fragile peace between coloniser and colonised shatters completely. When Japanese forces invaded in 1942, six Europeans chose to stay behind rather than abandon the people they had come to love. Banaban families are torn apart and scattered across the Pacific - to labour camps, to starvation, to unthinkable cruelty. Yet amid the horror, extraordinary courage emerges: a young man's desperate escape by canoe, a mother's unbreakable faith, a policeman forced to walk between two worlds, and a love that refuses to die even when everything else is lost.Spanning fifteen years and woven from real family history, Curse of Nakaa is a sweeping, deeply researched saga of greed and sacrifice, survival and remembrance - and the enduring spirit of a people who would not be erased.The Banabans believed they were cursed until Teimanaia's return. As war engulfs their island, Curse of Nakaa tightens its grip - and only their unbreakable faith in their ancestors can carry them through.The second book in the Land of Matang series, following Nakaa's Awakening."Even though you were taken from Banaba, I know how often you return to your homeland, if only in your dreams..."