Penny separated from her fiancé a year ago. Then her mother died, and she lost her job as a reporter at the Flagstaff Tribune in Arizona. Her only family now is a half-sister in Ahipara, New Zealand, a woman she met just once when she was a gangly adolescent. But she decides to visit the exotic-sounding country to try and get her life back on track. She isn’t there long before a body is discovered up on the gum fields – kauri gum from ancient forests that once cloaked the land – and her new friends insist that she use her reporter’s skills to head their investigation. What did happen to Bethany Adams four years ago? And who is the ex-soldier calling himself Maric who lives in an old fishing shack on the dunes? Everybody calls him the night watchman, but his skills suggest he is much more than that. A mystery that could equally be a suspense novel.