The many bays, coves, and steeply rising hills of the Marlborough Sounds create some of New Zealand's most glorious, but challenging, environments. Maori carved out a living there over hundreds of years, but as European settlers farmed, milled, mined, fished, and chased the tourist dollar they transformed the Sounds. Maori lost their land, language, and way of life. Both groups had to overcome obstacles that ranged from the merely difficult to the nearly impossible, but Maori faced additional systemic legal and economic barriers. History continues to play out here in complex ways--Maori and European, land and sea, boom and bust, locals and tourists. These multiple strands are brought together for the first time in a wide-ranging, engrossing, and richly illustrated account of the Sounds and its resourceful and resilient peoples.