Night Tribe: 2023

(Paperback)

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Description

Twelve-year-old Toby and his sister Millie, fourteen, are tramping the Heaphy Track with their mother when they go off-track to find an old surveyors hut their grandfather used. When their mother breaks her leg in a hidden hole the kids set off back to fetch help. They spend some nights alone, hungry and lost. So far, so ordinary, but there is something strange about the cave theyve camped next to. A little woman emerges and draws them in with the promise of food and shelter. They enter an underground cavern that is deeper than they first thought and where a whole tribe lives. These people believe in natural law, not human law, and have deliberately hidden away from humans believing that here they can survive a total war or pandemic. The kids are intrigued by the techniques this strange people have used to survive but this is tempered by the growing realisation that the Tribe dont want them to leave. . .

Author Bio

AUTHOR: Peter Butler Author of two non-fiction titles: Opium & Gold, the story of the early Chinese goldminers in NZ and Life & Times of Te Rauparaha the story of the famous warrior as told by his son Tamihana. His first novel, Gravel Roads, was published in 2010 and was well reviewed. He lived for many years on a bush block near the Heaphy Track, and still has a farm there growing horopito commercially, though he now lives in Nelson. His first job in the Bay was working on the Heaphy Track for the Forest Service, so he knows it well. He also knows what native flora and fauna can be used for, which is incorporated into the story. He is the Chair of the Farewell Wharariki HealthPost Nature Trust, helping to restore 12,000 hectares at the NW tip of the South Island.