Cheating husband killed Shania's Kiwi dream

The Motatapu farm was Twain's 'dream house'. Photo / Supplied

Music star Shania Twain has revealed how she put her "heart, soul and dreams" into her New Zealand home - while her husband was having an affair with his secretary.

The Canadian country singer, 45, has written a tell-all memoir about the end of her 14-year marriage to producer Robert "Mutt" Lange after his affair with her close friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud.

Twain ended up marrying Thiebaud's former husband Frederic.

In the book, From this Moment On, she writes about Motatapu, the couple's high-country sheep station near Queenstown.

"I started designing a homestead for us shortly after we bought it and began putting my heart, soul and dreams into the plans," she said. "I dreamed of riding horses across the vast plains, along winding riverbanks and through golden tussocks in the sharp, beaming sunshine of the land of the Kiwi."

The pair bought the 24,731ha Motatapu Station and Mt Soho for $21.5 million in 2004.

She talked fondly of her time in New Zealand with Mutt and their son, Eja.

"Every year Mutt, Eja and I would go there for several months, living in a small caravan parked in one of the sheep paddocks...we enjoyed camping out while our home was being built."

She returned from her home in Switzerland in early 2008 to finish the project.

But while in New Zealand she became suspicious of her husband. "Our New Zealand trips were usually spent in three- to four-month stretches. During this stretch in New Zealand, Mutt returned to Switzerland twice, while Eja and I stayed behind.

When Twain returned to Switzerland in March 2008, she discovered her friend was having an affair with her husband. "The same friend who'd comforted me over the phone, expressing how absurd it was of me to have any such suspicions of my husband. The idea that she was the mistress... had not even entered my mind."

She married Thiebaud's husband, Frederic, in January. She said she turned to him after the break-up because he was the only person who understood.

It is not known how assets were split after the couple divorced in 2008 but Twain no longer owns the property.