Hokitika · 1984 · citedThe Bone People
Keri Hulme
The West Coast of the South Island, Te Tai Poutini: a narrow strip of black-sand beaches, tidal lagoons and rainforest pinned between the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea. Kerewin Holmes lives alone in a tower she built on the coast near the Okarito lagoon; the mute child Simon and the Maori man Joe come into her solitude. The map runs the wet, wild coast from Okarito north to the old gold port of Hokitika, with one journey east across the island to Christchurch. The novel is steeped in Maori language and Kai Tahu presence, and greenstone, pounamu, runs through it.
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