Notes
Laurel Maynard has been brought up in a world of privilege in Wellington by her New Zealand European father. When she is sent to spend a summer in a small town in southern Hawke's Bay, with Doctor Ana Kini, her mother who abandoned her as a baby, Laurel meets Romeo, a boy taken off the streets of South Auckland by his uncle, and Mauki, a tough misunderstood local girl carrying a burden almost impossible to bear. Over the summer, Laurel and her mother discover how alike they really are and begin to explore the past that kept them apart, uncovering family secrets, and some of the tensions between city and country, Maori and pakeha.
