Author(s): Jade Kake

NZ Fiction

Checkerboard Hill is a story of belonging, dislocation, misunderstandings, identity and fractured relationships.
When a family member dies in Australia, Ria flies from New Zealand and returns to the family and home in Australia she suddenly left decades before as a teenager. Waiting for her return are her husband and son in New Zealand. Neither family has met the other, and Ria has always kept her Maori, Australian, New Zealand identities and lives separate. But the family tensions, unfinished arguments, connections to places and meeting of former friends, lead Ria to revisit her memories and reflect on the social and cultural tensions and racism she experienced, and the decisions she made. The novel confronts the complexities of families, secrets and trauma and the way these play out across generations. It also explores the ways in which Maori cultural traditions and tikanga are transmuted and transformed across the Tasman, across time and space.