ABOUT
THE BOOK

In Auē eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Ārama’s aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but silenced by abuse her voice was absent from the story. In Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. They return to her childhood and the time when she began to feel the swamp in her veins – the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of her tīpuna, the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the girl shot the man.