From the bestselling author of Turncoat comes a powerful new novel. As the pressure of fatherhood tightens its grip, sleepless nights and rising tensions begin to erode Hepa’s sense of control. When the line between fear and reality begins to blur, can he be trusted with his own son?
Hepa hasn’t slept properly in four months. His newborn son, Wī, cries through the night. The bills keep coming. The pressure to hold everything together is closing in.
Hepa tells himself to harden up. Be the pillar his family needs.
The only place he feels in control is in his dreams. Since childhood he’s been able to shape them, to bend the dream world to his will.
Until something begins watching back.
A presence with pāua-shell eyes starts appearing in his dreams, and then in waking life. In the shadows. In strangers’ faces. Whispering to Hepa while he rocks Wī to sleep.
It feels like living with a taniwha on his shoulder. Hepa can’t tell where the nightmares end and the real world begins – and he’s terrified of what he might do…
.
Hepa hasn’t slept properly in four months. His newborn son, Wī, cries through the night. The bills keep coming. The pressure to hold everything together is closing in.
Hepa tells himself to harden up. Be the pillar his family needs.
The only place he feels in control is in his dreams. Since childhood he’s been able to shape them, to bend the dream world to his will.
Until something begins watching back.
A presence with pāua-shell eyes starts appearing in his dreams, and then in waking life. In the shadows. In strangers’ faces. Whispering to Hepa while he rocks Wī to sleep.
It feels like living with a taniwha on his shoulder. Hepa can’t tell where the nightmares end and the real world begins – and he’s terrified of what he might do…
.