Heart-warming and compulsive reading, this is an entertaining, lively and moving novel from one of New Zealand's favourite authors. Donny Mac was released at Eastertime, about a month before Pansy Holloway, also known as Nightshade, disappeared for good. After a short stint in prison on trumped-up charges, the loveable simpleton Donny Mac returns to the house left to him by his grandfather in the small settlement of Manawa, in the shadow of Mt Ruapehu. Now inhabited by a handful of colourful locals, the once prosperous milling town is only bustling in the ski season when the out-of-towners arrive. Awaiting Donny s return is the drunken and pregnant Nightshade, who claims he is the father. Donny's friends keep watch anxiously- the lace-making Bull Howie; Vera who can be seen every evening wheeling Bull s dinner in a pram down to his house in her own version of meals on wheels; farmer George Kingi and his fey four-year-old daughter Lovey; and the strange elderly sisters who have moved in next door. Also watching is the Virgin Tracey, a sixteen-year-old hiding out in one of the abandoned houses, with her own tiny baby. When an accident threatens to put Donny back