FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Whangarei Northland New Zealand Author Mike Crum has released a remarkable body of work that bridges continents, histories, and personal reckonings. His three books, Roots, Wheels of Change, and Waka to Whangarei, form a sweeping trilogy that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. Each book stands on its own, yet together they trace a life shaped by stone, road, and the ties that bind us to people and place.
Roots lays the foundation of the saga, beginning in a weathered farmhouse above a gurgling stream where the Crum family first became known for bricks, barley, and a rum that burned like a confession. What begins as the story of Cain Crumb, a man who redefined both his name and his legacy, unfolds into a generational tale of masons, farmers, and settlers whose lives carried them from the Welsh borderlands to the far edges of New Zealand. This is not history told through lists of dates and battles, but through the hands that shaped stone, the prayers carried into chapel pews, and the quiet courage of families who set sail for a future that was anything but certain. Crum’s writing places the reader at the heart of work and faith, where the true measure of legacy is not in wealth but in resilience passed from one generation to the next.
If Roots is about building foundations, Wheels of Change is about the motion that carries us forward. The book opens with the dissolution of a long marriage and the question of what comes next when the familiar map of life no longer applies. For Crum, the answer was the bicycle. From Cairo’s chaotic streets to the silence of the Namib desert, from the Serengeti’s roar at night to the raw spray of Victoria Falls, Crum chronicles his journey across Africa and beyond. What emerges is more than a travel narrative. It is an honest account of loss, persistence, and the clarity that comes from moving through the world under one’s own power. The voice remains plainspoken, even kind, making room for doubt and humor as much as for grit and courage. Wheels of Change is both an adventure and a meditation on what it means to start over when life insists on change.
The most recent volume, Waka to Whangarei, brings the trilogy full circle by anchoring it in friendship, identity, and the complexity of New Zealand itself. Through the parallel stories of Crum and his friend Pene, readers witness two lives unfolding in different rhythms, one steady and structured, the other turbulent yet deeply rooted in whakapapa. Pene’s journey, marked by gang colors, Harley rides, forestry shifts, and finally a return to Te Reo and marae, stands alongside Crum’s own path. Together, their stories reflect a country fractured by colonisation but still finding strength in memory, heritage, and reconciliation. This book is not only about personal growth but about cultural survival and renewal, told with honesty and respect.
Taken together, these three books create a portrait of continuity and change. They move from stone houses in borderland villages to the open roads of Africa and the contested streets of Tikipunga, always returning to the question of how identity is built and rebuilt across time. Crum’s trilogy refuses sentimentality, offering instead a grounded, humane perspective shaped by lived experience. His writing is rich with detail, but never indulgent; lyrical, but never detached.
Readers who step into Roots, Wheels of Change, and Waka to Whangarei will find stories of family, endurance, and belonging that feel both intimate and expansive. The trilogy is now available on major platforms, including Amazon.
About the Author
Mike Crum writes with the weight of history and the breath of lived experience. A craftsman of words as much as of stone and road, his work spans heritage, resilience, and the transformative power of motion. Drawing from family stories rooted in the Welsh borderlands, his own travels across Africa, and his life in New Zealand, Crum creates books that connect the personal with the universal. His trilogy reflects not only the arc of one family but also the endurance of the human spirit across generations and landscapes. He continues to write from his home in New Zealand, where history and present tense are never far apart.