Publisher's Synopsis
Brought up by his grandparents, Pop and Nanny Mei, and a range of uncles and cousins, seventeen-year-old Poi Paki is very much a part of the marae. It's the world of rural Maori: 'a bit naive, a bit cunning, a bit in your face and often more than a little crazy'. It's a place of humour, love but also violence and poverty. Poi dreams of leaving it to join the Army, like many of his other relatives have done in the past. He doesn't want to escape the love, respect and loyalty of the marae, but he wants to escape the inter-family tensions and the way you can easily be sucked under by circumstance. He also wants to find his own place in the world, knowing that he started out as a product of rape, abandoned by his mother. Poi has ambition, intelligence and plenty of cheek. He also has a strong foundation of love, but will it help him on his way?Raumoa Ormsby was raised at his ancestral marae at Kohupatiki Paa, midway between Napier and Hastings (where he now lives). One of ten, he attended Karamu High before going on to Wellington Teachers Training College and then Victoria University.;Although he dropped out of university, he remained in Wellington and began work for the Post Office at its headquarters. He later transferred to the Post Office Association, representing postal workers, becoming a senior official and serving on the Board of the Trade Union Education Authority until it was disbanded in 1992. He subsequently moved to the Engineers Union in Hamilton, but in 1996 he returned to his family home at Kohupatiki Paa to look after his widowed mother. He worked for a while with his local marae committee and for the Hastings Taiwhenua, before starting writing.
