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Mutuwhenua

by Patricia Grace

Published 1 September 1988
Mutuwhenua is the story of Ripeka, who leaves her extended family and its traditional lifestyle to marry Graeme, a Pakeha schoolteacher. In the strange world of the city, Ripeka discovers that she cannot make the break from her whanau, that the old ways are too strong. The first novel by a Maori woman ever published, Mutuwhenua is a powerful, moving story of contrasts between old and new, young and old, Maori and Pakeha.

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Small Holes in the Silence

by Patricia Grace

Published 26 September 2006
This is a fine new collection of short stories by the much-loved Patricia Grace, probably never more popular since the great commercial success of the novel Tu. The feast of stories is varied: urban, rural, New Zealand, overseas, tribal, contemporary. The thread that runs through all the stories, though, is Grace's huge sympathy for the underdog and the perspective of the outsider. The world she depicts is often a stark and unsentimental place, in which people struggle against ageing, rejection, violence and betrayal.

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Ned and Katina

by Patricia Grace

Published 4 April 2011
A TRUE STORY OF LOVE IN WARTIME AND IN PEACE.In Crete during the Second World War a wounded Maori Battalion soldier and a young Cretan woman fall in love when the young infantryman is sheltered by her family.After marrying in Crete, Ned and Katina come back to live in New Zealand, settling in the Far North. They live a long, rich and happy life together, raising a family and involving themselves in community affairs there and in the Wellington region. Ned dies in 1987, Katina in 1996.Years later, the whanau of Ned and Katina approached writer Patricia Grace to compile their parents' story. Ned & Katina is the result. This warm, beautifully written true story is impossible to put down.