"This is a writer at the pinnacle of her art. Dogside Story is her best yet." --Beryl Fletcher, Waikato Times

"This life-affiming novel reveals once again that Patricia Grace ... is a consummate storyteller.... The novel is a sheer delight in its exuberance and in its nonjudgmental understanding of both the destructive and productive aspects of human interaction." --World Literature Today, Fall 2002

"Grace is an absolute master of her material.... [She] is by far the finest novelist in Oceania and among the finest in contemporary world literatures." --Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, University of Hawai'i

There is conflict in the whanau. The young man, Te Rua, holds a "secret for life, the one to die with." But he realizes that if he is to acknowledge and claim his daughter, the secret will have to be told.

"The Sisters" are threatening to drag the whanau through the courts. But why? What is really going on?

Meanwhile, wider events are encroaching. To this East Coast site visitors will arrive in numbers, wanting to be among the first in the world to see the new millennium sunrise. There are plans to be put into action, there's money to be made, and there's high drama as the millennium turns....

Like Patricia Grace's award-winning novel Potiki before it, Dogside Story is set in a rural Maori coastal community. The power of the land, the strength of the whanau, are life-preserving forces. This rich and dramatic novel, threaded with humor, by one of New Zealand's finest writers presents a powerful picture of Maori in modern times.

For sale only in the U.S., its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico

Patricia Grace is the author of the story collection Waiariki and the novels and Baby No-Eyes and Potiki (winner of the New Zealand Book Award for fiction and Germany's LiBeraturpreis in 1994).