1935: Paraiti, an old Maori healer of great renown, travels around New Zealand with her horse, mule and dog. Thanks to her ancestral know-how and a pharmacopoeia drawn from nature, she heals, soothes and saves lives. But when a white middle-class white woman from the city summons her to help her terminate an already advanced pregnancy, she is faced with a dilemma and a terrible secret... a secret on the scale of the gulf that separates the country’s communities. Witi Ihimaera paints a fabulous portrait of a nature in symbiosis with the Maori people and that of a fearless, intelligent, fearsome... and funny woman.
Nga Kupu Ora—Aotearoa Maori Book Awards 2013. Adapted for the cinema by Dana Rothberg under the title White Lies in 2013 (Tuakiri Huna in Maori)
