In Patea Boys, Airana Ngarewa delivers a series of powerful and poignant narratives that delve into the heart of a small Maori community on the South Taranaki coast. Capturing the wairua of Patea and its inhabitants, Ngarewa weaves characters throughout the short stories to leave us at the end with a complete kete, the whole whakapapa of a place. With Patea Boys in the front half of the book, and Ngati Patea on the flip side, we are given the opportunity to hear the stories of Patea in both English, and in its own native tongue, te reo Maori. Regardless of which end one starts from, in either language, Ngarewa’s storytelling is lyrical and evocative, offering us a window into a world rich with culture and history; of afternoons at the local pool, and of knowing everybody from the lifeguards to the cops as ‘aunty.’ It’s this familiarity, this nostalgic picture that Ngarewa paints of rural life at the pa, at school, at nan’s house; that is what makes up the essence of this book, and that is what makes it the taonga that it is. (Short Stories)