'Water will come and you think it will be soft. You think it will be smooth and find its way around your things: your houses and cars and furniture, your gardens and windows and hope. But water can be the foot of an elephant, the horns of a moose, a herd of buffalo running from a lion, water can be the kauri falling in the forest, a two-tonne truck, a whole stadium filled with 50,000 people, screaming . . . Water is life, and water can be death.'

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child who is drawn to the waters of the indigenous wetlands. New to the street is Sera and her family, who are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe and living next door is Janet, an older white woman with an opinion about everything.

When Janet's adult son Conor unexpectedly arrives home sporting a fresh buzzcut and a disturbing tattoo, no one suspects just how extreme the young man has become - no one except Wairere who can feel both the danger, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.

FINALIST OF THE OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS 2025