Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home. But Ārama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there’s aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters. Here is a novel that is both raw and sublime, a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction. Haere mai, Becky Manawatu.

In Aue eight-year-old Arama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikoura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Arama's aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but silenced by abuse her voice was absent from the story. In Kataraina, Kat and her whanau take over the telling. As one, they return to her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins - the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of her tipuna, the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the girl shot the man. Becky Manawatu's new novel is the much-awaited sequel to award-winning bestseller Aue and is unflinching in its portrayal of the destructive ways people love one another and the ancestral whenua on which they stand.