As soon as she saw it, Miro Mananui knew what it was. An owl, its cryptic colours flaring with the dawn.Who has the owl come for? Whose name has it cried out to Miro Mananui the Matua of the village of Waituhi?In Whanau II, many lives and many stories intersect. The passionate Mattie Jones bears a horrifying secret; Tama Mananui makes the most of an arranged marriage with a woman twenty years older; Nani Paora holds the key to the past and a history filled with bloodshed; and his grandson Pene may well be the key to the future. Pita Mahana's attempts to reinstate the past set in train events that lead to the return of the owl for its victim.At the heart of the novel is Miro Mananuit herself, the Matua, holder of the power of life and death.Whanau II represents an unprecedented return by a contemporary novelist to the characters he first wrote about thirty years ago. Fuelled by passion, politics, psychic power and the search for truth, it reveals a mature writer at the height of his powers.