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The Legend of Beau Baxter by Ivan Dunn

The Legend of Beau Baxter takes the unique approach of inserting a fictional character into one of the greatest feats of New Zealand sporting history to create a series of what ifs and fictional events based around the facts of what actually did happen. It is about the 1924-25 Invincibles rugby team and what might have happened if they had a tall, handsome and talented rugby player called Beau Baxter with them.

Beau Baxter is not the type of player the media in 1924 would have liked to promote, rather than being a honest, well rounded man with good values, he is a lovable rogue, a bounder and a cad who is hardly modest. The result is a tour with more sex and less etiquette than was ever written about in the reports of the tour.

As unlikely as it may seem, there was a former rugby player who played for the New Zealand Maori even though his dark shin came from his roots in the North American continent and he was not Maori, although Alan ‘Kiwi’ Blake came along much later. He did however provide the inspiration for this fictional character. Other real life events and facts surrounding the tour also helped in Beau’s creation, and while some of the characters and events are fictional, they are intertwined with factual events and scores adding realism.

The resulting novel is an unforgettable and humorous yet improbable tale told by a man whose talent and good looks are only surpassed by his ego.

RRP 36.99
Published and distributed by HarperCollins Publishers
 

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