This historical novel, told in two stories 20 twenty years apart, explores the relationships that unfold on the West Coast of Te Wai Pounamu New Zealand, in the mid-19th century, as isolated, difficult to access parts of the country are entered by European explorers guided by local Maori.
Set in the 19th Century, it plaits together as a flax-root narrative prose and poetic imagery to tell a timeless love story. It links people with the natural environment, and blends languages, cultures, shared endeavour and compassion in a vivid multi-cultural epiphany of life in Aotearoa-New Zealand. - John Weir
Kathleen Gallagher is a poet, playwright, filmmaker and novelist. She received the New Zealand Playwrights Award in 1993, and the Sonja Davies Peace Award in 2004 for the film Tau Te Mauri Breath Of Peace. She has authored three collections of poetry, 16 plays, six feature films, and two novels.
In this landmark medical narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher chronicle the story of Nic Volker, the Wisconsin boy at the center of a daring breakthrough in medicine-a complete gene sequencing to discover the cure for an otherwise undiagnosable illness. At just two years old, Nic experiences a searing pain that signals the awakening of a new and deadly disease. For years, through false starts and failed cures, he holds on to life, buoyed up by his mother's fierce drive to get him the care he needs. But when even the world's experts are stumped by Nic's illness, his doctors come up with a radical, long-shot plan: a step into the unknown. The next major scientific frontier, following the completion of the Human Genome Project, was to figure out how to use our new knowledge to save lives-to bring genomic or personalized medicine into reality. It's a quest that is undertaken by researchers around the world. But it is only when geneticist Howard Jacob hears about young Nic that the finish line finally comes into sight: It's no longer a race to make history. It's a race to save this boy's life.
