Join us at Poppies in Casabella Lane on Sunday 28 June from 2.00 till 3.30 to meet Caroline Barron, author of Ripiro Beach: a memoir of life after near death. You may have heard Caroline on the radio in the last couple of weeks, or seen her on morning television talking about her wonderful book, and we are delighted to be able to welcome her into the shop for our first post-lockdown event.

Caroline Barron’s father never found his birth mother. After he dies suddenly on her twentieth birthday, Caroline develops an insidious fear of her own untimely death. When she nearly bleeds out on an operating table during childbirth, it almost seems her greatest fear is justified.

Emerging from the experience a changed woman, Caroline spends the next six years poring over her family history in an attempt to make sense of her inexplicable rage. The family secrets she unearths threaten to destabilise her identity and carefully built life, eventually leading her to Northland’s rugged Ripiro Beach, where past and present dramatically collide.

Ripiro Beach is a beautifully written, relentlessly honest memoir. Caroline learns that there are mental health issues, suicide and incarceration in her family and – most significantly – that she is Māori.

‘Caroline’s emotional intelligence lights up all those deep dark wells of motherhood. I saw myself, and so many mothers, in these words: the heartbursting glorious hardness of it all.’

CATHERINE WOULFE, BOOKS EDITOR, THE SPINOFF


‘A vivid and profound journey into family secrets and the unknowable past.’

PAULA MORRIS, AUTHOR OF AWARD-WINNING NOVEL, RANGATIRA


“This is one powerful read. I found it riveting, at times confronting, moving and passionate. It’s a very brave book”

—DAME FIONA KIDMAN

Public event - everyone is welcome. Please RSVP to hamilton@poppiesbooks.co.nz by Wednesday 24 June.