She is inventive and imaginative, but lacks emotional support.

Grace, the third Heke child and oldest daughter, escapes from reality through writing. The borstal manager treats him with kindness and teaches him about his Maori heritage. At borstal, however, he finds a sense of belonging. He is sent to a borstal and removed from his home and school for associating with car thieves. The next-oldest, Mark “Boogie” Heke, has a criminal record for multiple minor offenses. Nig’s girlfriend, also a member of the gang, is too frightened of being hit or hurt to offer him the affection and tenderness he craves. Nig tries to make his fellow gang members into a substitute family, but they, too, are cruel and violent like his father. The gang is Maori, and its members have elaborate cultural facial tattoos. He loves his brothers and sisters but hates Jake for his brutality. Nig, the oldest child, leaves home to join a street gang. Although Beth loves her children fiercely, she cannot protect them from Jake’s drunken rages. He once violently beats Beth for talking back to him at one of these parties. Often, he invites others back to his home for rowdy parties, and though he tries to pretend he is easygoing, drinking brings out his temper. He is nicknamed “the Muss” because he attacks any pub patrons he believes have crossed the line. Jake is unemployed and spends his days at the pub, drinking himself into a stupor with his friends. Only one of the children, Grace, shows any aptitude for school and learning. The family is poorly-educated, and there are no books in their home. But every time, she is unable to quit for good, always settling back into her old patterns. Both Beth and Jake are alcoholics, though Beth goes through phases of trying to give up drinking and saving money for the children’s futures. Urban culture centers around pubs, not the ancient meeting houses of Maori culture. Beth is traditional, trying to connect with her Maori roots, but in the city she is isolated from her rural heritage.

Beth Heke has been married to her husband Jake for 18 years they live in government-supported housing in the slums and have five children. The novel is written as a series of interior monologues contrasted against each other. In 1985, he turned to writing full-time as a career. Duff later returned to school, graduated, worked a series of jobs, and was jailed again.

He was expelled from school as a child and attended a boys’ home before being sentenced to a borstal, or juvenile detention center. Duff, who is half-Maori himself, based the novel partially on his own troubled childhood being raised by a series of relatives. Once Were Warriors is Duff’s first novel. It tells the story of life in a modern-day Maori family and the realities of domestic violence. Once Were Warriors is a 1990 literary novel from New Zealand writer Alan Duff.

Once were warriors by alan duff