Patricia Grace is a Maori novelist. Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1937, she has taught in primary and secondary schools and was the Writing Fellow at Victoria University in Wellington in 1985. Now a full-time writer, she lives on the ancestral land of her people of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa. Her previous novels include Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps and Potiki, which won the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards as well as the Literaturpreis in Frankfurt. She has also written four short story collections. Today's edited extract is from her new novel, Dogside Story, published this month by The Women's Press at £10.99 in UK.