In captivating style Giuffre tells what happens when she finds herself alone with her boys on Rarotonga, a tiny speck in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, 11,000 kilometres from home. She knows no one, the house she's been promised doesn't eventuate, and almost every other outsider is on a ten-day package tour.
Her unlikely saviour is Emily, an 82-year-old Māori woman with a large white house on the edge of the ocean, which the two women share with two callous missionaries, the ghosts of Emily's ancestors, and, briefly, a bizarre couple from Eastern Europe.
As time passes, ... more