Rarely does a novel feel as organically true as Patricia Grace's Dogside Story, winner of the Kiriyama Prize for fiction in 2001. Rarely do voice, character, and plot so successfully convey the essence of an indigenous people and their homeland without seeming contrived or pretentious as in this stunning new novel by Patricia Grace. This is the fifth novel by Grace, a New Zealand writer of Maori descent, whose previous works have included the much-beloved Baby No-Eyes and prize-winning Potiki.

Writing in a compelling island-bred variety of English robust with Maori words and rhythms, Grace vividly portrays the contemporary problems of the whanau (village) of Dogside, founded as the result of a quarrel between two sisters over their dead brother's canoe. While one sister remained Godside, the other settled in the south in a village contrarily named Dogside. The story takes place generations later and revolves around a 24-year-old man, Te Rua, the mysterious loss of his leg, and his uncertain connection with a young girl named Kid. Even as the main village fisherman, Te Rua remains isolated from his community and troubled by past events. "It was company, company that he often longed for but wanted to be able to do without, as though all this water, all this physical life could fill him while he looked for his grown self."

The year is 1999, and Te Rua must provide crayfish for a wedding party. The villagers still have not raised money for a new wharekai (meeting house) that was destroyed in a windstorm, so they make do with a temporary shelter and a lean-to for cooking instead of a real wharekai with rafters carved with ancestral images. At the wedding they learn that Piiki Chiefy, a "blow bag from the other side," has yet another illegal scheme in the works. This time Piiki has advertised camping facilities on Dogside over the Internet to outsiders who want to view the sunrise on the first day of the new millennium. Piiki has rented land he doesn't own, and he's run off with the deposit money, leaving the villagers to deal with the tourists soon to arrive. Grace shows how the people of Dogside take care of their own. At meetings of the whanau, people tell stories and resolve problems, and then they sing. Family conflicts, money worries, outsider influences, soil erosion, rising sea waters—all troubles are set aside as they sing to each other and "up to the rafters."

Those who write about indigenous cultures often face the challenge of reaching a wider, international audience. It isn't simply a matter of writing in other languages or finding good translators, but rather knowing how to tell a story that crosses borders while remaining true to one's homeland. Patricia Grace meets this challenge uncompromisingly, and yet with honesty, wit, and loving patience that comes with maturity and inherent wisdom. Dogside Story is an eloquent song of community, a song about caring and forgiving. Its music reaches far beyond the rafters.