Alan Duff explores the aftermath of Once Were Warriors in this novel, following the lives of Beth, Polly, Abe, Tania, Mulla, Gordon, and Jake as they all try to get their lives together.  In parts, Duff is very successful in bringing the reader along and seeing how (in particular) Jake gets off the streets and starts to make something of himself.  Many of the characters in Duff’s book muse on what I think is one of Duff’s core themes in his writing, Māori realizing their potential.

There is much more that I could say - but I’m not going to:  As with all of Duff’s works I have read so far, there is a lot of brutality against women, lobbying for Māori to just bootstrap their way out of racism/trauma, and explicit racial slurs against Asian people.