5.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews. – Customer review on 25/09/2009

I strongly agree with both of the above reviews. Someone told me the genre is called creative non-fiction - biographical, but many of the specifics have had to be changed or even imagined to respect and protect the individuals whose stories are told. From page one it is immediately obvious why. Like an exquisite kite the book powerfully, skillfully and movingly holds complex interwoven stories; the writer's own story of idealism, growing self awareness, heartbreak and love is threaded together with the stories of the women who trusted Desmond to tell them. More than that, first-time published writer Desmond's skill in weaving these compelling stories back and forth in time means you, the reader, are taken along with her every page and every line. Despite the book's painful and challenging content, above all this is a book of hope. I would recommend it for anyone interested in New Zealand's hidden social histories, and for anyone who has lived even a fraction of what it tells.

5.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews. – Customer review on 30/09/2009

Totally absorbing. Ultimately a story of hope. Pip Desmond writes with skill and passion about the lives of eleven women who 'ran with the gangs' in 1970's Aotearoa NZ. She entered their lives and for a few significant years dedicated herself to living, working, breathing, partying ... side by side with them. She traces their lives from their mostly rural beginnings to their urban displacement, seeking them out over 30 years later to connect with them and befriend them again. Their stories are painful, upsetting insights into a place and time and sector of our society that we may know little of but that instills wariness and fear. Through all of this, Desmond weaves her own story with its privileged past, social and feminist idealism, love and heartache and creates a compelling tale of twelve courageous women, bound together by trust. This first-time author has set the standard high. Look forward to more from her.

5.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews. – Customer review on 25/09/2009

Part memoir, part biography, this book describes the extraordinary undertaking of one courageous young woman who over thirty years ago chose to become involved in a section of society that still instils fear and revulsion among most of us. Pip Desmond writes with deceptive simplicity, enlightening and informing the reader and moving this one to tears. Thoroughly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews. – Customer review on 25/09/2009

Part memoir, part biography, this book describes the extraordinary undertaking of one courageous young woman who over thirty years ago chose to become involved in a section of society that still instils fear and revulsion among most of us. Pip Desmond writes with deceptive simplicity, enlightening and informing the reader and moving this one to tears. Thoroughly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews. – Customer review on 24/09/2009

This amazing book is both heart rending and deeply inspiring. A remarkable blend of memoir, autobiography and oral history, it interweaves the individual stories of the women of the Aroha Trust, a women's work gang in 1970's Aotearoa New Zealand. It touches on social issues including the feminist movement and the Maori renaissance and traces the progression of minority groups' struggle for equality up till the present day, but through individual story telling and anecdote rather than academic discourse.

New writer Pip Desmond's world is vividly re-imagined, and the atmosphere of the seventies in Aotearoa, a time when social activists dared to hope for change, is tangible. Desmond spent almost twenty years in the conception, researching and writing of this book, travelling to interview the Aroha Trust women in an attempt to map their lives. She tells, most poignantly, where these women came from before they ended up running with the gangs, and, even more fascinatingly, where they ended up.

I would recommend this book not only to anyone interested in social justice, Maori and women's issues in Aotearoa, but to anyone looking for a damn good read. This book is unputtdownable; you'll stay up reading, almost painfully engrossed. For women's centres, refuge libraries and any feminist organsiations it would be a great book to have in the library: it's the kind of book that could really help women at certain times and after certain experiences. Also, for anyone interested in literary fiction and in genre-bending books that walk the line between remembered fact and fiction, anyone interested in writers like Janet Malcom, or Helen Garner, this is a new sort of fabulous - a tricky, cross-genre book that plays with form but that also, and this is rare, has a social conscience.