The assistance of Creative New Zealand is gratefully acknowledged. I especially wish to thank Dianna Serci at Creative New Zealand for her patience and understanding. Huge thanks to: Dr Susan Sayer, Literary Agent Extraordinaire, for her wise counsel and for her loving friendship; everyone at Huia Publishers especially Brian and Robyn Bargh for their care and enthusiasm and to John Huria, my editor at Huia, for his editing skills and his astute judgement; Eve and Trevor Ebbett for the working-title graphics, the love and the cucumber sandwiches; to my granddaughter Naomi Taylor for her help with te reo; and most of all to Bernadette Doolan for her love and staunch support and for always looking genuinely pleased and interested when I said I had yet another draft for her to read.