ERIN can hear the whaanau whispering, and they won' t tell her why. She' s ditched school to help her aunty clean houses- even though she has a full-time job looking after all the moko. But no one cares, and soon she will be picked clean, like the bones in her maamaa' s bedroom.STAR is home for the first time in years, and he' s worn the same clothes for days. Everything feels unfamiliar: the karakia, his nephews, the house that he grew up in. He' s too scared to tell his family that he' s bombing back at uni. And the past is an affliction, a gently rising tide.It is 178 years after colonisation. Together, the cousins escape. Free-wheeling across the countryside in a car without a warrant, they cast their net widely. Their family mythologies, heartaches and rifts will surface, and amidst them the glint of possibility: a return to the whenua where it all began.A tragicomedy set in the confines of a 1994 Daihatsu Mira, Poorhara is a journey of epic proportions- a poignant, expansive and darkly funny first novel written by a true poorhara.
