Catherine Raynes: The Unlikely Doctor and The Stars Are a Million Glittering Worlds

The Unlikely Doctor by Timoti Te Moke  

Born into love but then thrust into violence, and shaped by struggle, Timoti Te Moke was never destined to be a leader. After an early start as a bright boy in the eastern Bay of Plenty, nurtured by his reo Māori-speaking grandparents, Timoti's life changed sharply when his mother took custody of him when he was six. He survived abuse, state care, gangs and prison, his life marked by trauma and pain.

By fourteen, he was behind bars. By twenty, he'd crossed the Tasman, trying to leave his past behind. But it was a moment in a prison cell — a glimpse of blue sky — that sparked a life-altering question: What if this isn't all there is?

Through grit and an unyielding drive for justice, Timoti transformed his life. He returned to Aotearoa, became a paramedic and, after facing racism and an unsupported manslaughter charge that nearly derailed his life, became a medical student in his fifties. Timoti is now a fully qualified doctor — proof that brilliance can come from anywhere, and that our society must change to allow it.

A powerful, confronting memoir of injustice, identity and the cost of lost potential, The Unlikely Doctor is not just Timoti's story — it is every child's. Because when we remove the barriers for success, we don't just help individuals — we help reshape a nation. 

 

The Stars Are a Million Glittering Worlds by Gina Butson  

Thea, a young woman crushed by guilt, flees to Central America to escape her life in New Zealand.

In Guatemala, she meets the charismatic Chris and his partner, Sarah, and the three of them form a tight bond. While the rest of the world is caught in the grip of the global financial crisis, the three friends find a false reality in the backpacker party town of San Pedro. Surrounded by the dark volcanic beauty of the Guatemalan highlands, Thea starts to come to terms with her past. But everything changes when a tragedy occurs. 

Knowing she has to leave Central America, but not ready to return home, Thea settles in Tasmania and into a new relationship. Bonded by grief, she and her partner make a life for themselves in Hobart. But years later, when tragedy strikes again, all Thea's old grief and guilt - together with unanswered questions - come to the surface. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and lockdowns, Thea begins to question the trust she has in her partner. She realises that if she wants to know the truth, she will need to come clean about her past.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News talk z'b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Twenty one to twelve on News Talks. He'd be Katherine
Rains as our book reviewer. She's here with her two
recommendations for us this weekend. Hey, Catherine, Jack, really looking
forward to the details and your thoughts on this one.
Tell us about The Unlikely Doctor by Timorti Timoki. This
is just.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Really interesting and fascinating and a completely different life that
I know. And so starting where he is now, he's
just graduated after six years at med school, which he
graduated at fifty six, and he's working at as a
house officer at Minimal Hospital. But actually where Timahoe starts
in the first six years of his life is almost

(00:52):
idyllic compared to the rest of his story. And he's
raised by Alders and his family, and he describes them
himself as almost the best years of his life because
when he was born, his mum wasn't ready to be
a mum, and he goes to live with his choru,
and when he turns six, his mum decides to take
and back and he ends up with her and her partner,
and they were dysfunctional and substance abuses, and he's beaten

(01:15):
mercilessly really by his stepfather, you know, almost up to
three times a week. And so by the time he
turns thirteen, he's a really broken man and he's acting
out and he doesn't care about anything or anyone, and
he feels like he's really not meant to be anything.
And around that time he starts sniffing petrol and glue

(01:37):
and he ends up in trouble and boys homes and
becomes embroad with gangs and finds himself behind bars, and
then he finds his moment in Waikia in his twenties,
and he realizes at that point the next time he
ends up between bars, he won't be leaving and he
gets out and he's still acting up, and he has

(01:57):
these incremental moments of changes. He describes them, and within
a year he's left the gang and he's getting some work,
and after fifteen years of kind of living in Australia,
he comes back to New Zealand with the plan to
be a paramedic in study medicine. And then, because you know,
life's full of ups and downs, he finds himself on
a manslaughter charge following an incident with a man on

(02:19):
Dominion Road late at night where he had been working
at a drug and alcohol were a digertation center part time,
and he tells the story really interestingly. He says, because
he's mari and because he's poor, and because he's got history,
they charged him with manslaughter. And it's really interesting to
read in the book and it covers it in a
lot more detail. But the lawyer's lawyer essentially comes back

(02:41):
and says to him, I'll get three and you get
three and a half years if you plead guilty, and
the other than that they're just going to go for
the maximum. And he's like, but I haven't done anything,
and the easiest thing for him to do is except
that for something he didn't do, and he he's in
the end, he's found not guilty, and it's actually revealed
in this time that the police made the decision to
charge him without consulting the Crown solicitor and it's now

(03:04):
a claim that he's lodged with the y Tangu tribe all.
But he talks a lot about the barriers that have
been placed in front of him and also the potential
of individuals and the real message in his story is
about being poor and classed in a certain way by
society and it's a really eye opening story and I
think every New Zealander should read this, and I think
it makes you really think about people and their potential.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Sounds incredible, Okay, great, So that is The Unlikely Doctor
by Tim Molty to Morky, there's got to be a
movie as well, I think, Catherine. It sounds what a life.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, and it doesn't tell itself in the way of
a Hollywood story because they just there's the things that
happen and he really yeah, it's just you know, now
they're you know, and go to medical school in his
late forties and he's now a doctor and you know,
I mean, incredible.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
All right, Okay, The Unlikely Doctor by Tim Olty too,
Morchy is your first book? Next up something completely different,
but Noah nonethless fantastic. The Stars Are a Million Glittering
Worlds by Gina Buttson.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
So it's a set and across a fifteen year period
and said Guamala and Australia and New Zealand, and it
kind of includes our recent history of the global financial
crisis and the COVID lockdowns and the main character thea
is really running from her past and sort of friendships
and tragedies along the way. And the story begins with

(04:25):
a tragedy and you're really explicitly told what it is,
and it creates this mystery that's kind of always there
in the back of the story, and it's the secret
that drives her and keeps her moving from place to
place and drifting and never really finding peace and all
of these things that have been unset in her life

(04:46):
for so long. And she meets with Chris as this
man that she thought she could have the possibility of
having more than a friendship with, until he kind of
introduces her to his girlfriend Sarah, and despite this, they
all become really good friends. And this friendship's played out
in San Pedrow and a quatemal In town on the
shore of Lake Italian, and it's easy to imagine the

(05:07):
place it's beautifully described, and this energy and their friendship
and the culture and the way of the life, but
there's all these elements to their friendship and those kind
of toxic bits with things left unsaid and guessing what
secrets the other has and how can they trust each other,
And then tragedy rewrites life again. Anthia finds herself in
Tasmania in a relationship and testing her and these unanswered questions,

(05:32):
and it's really a book about how our past catches
up with us and becomes a central part of change
and this grief and mistrust and it's a really interesting
but you can always feel the kind of vibrancy of
these different places and these different worlds that she lives in.
It's very very well told story.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Nice, Thank you, Catherine. So Catherine's picks this week, The
Stars are a Million Glittering Worlds by Gina Buttson and
The Unlikely Doctor by Tim Morty Timurky. Both of those
books will be up on the News talks 'DB website.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to newstalks 'B from nine am Saturday, or follow the
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