Brothers in arms

What began as an exploration of the relationship between a boy and his father morphed into a story about two brothers surviving in the underclass of Aotearoa

- AIRANA NGAREWA

'Every boy becomes his father: ever repeating and reliving the same miserable fate. They know it and still they venture forth with hope in their hearts, believing each new horizon and its promises. No misstep, mistake or misdeed can steal them from their hope. Like lovers they marry; for better or for worse. Every boy becomes his father, read their vows. But not I."

These were the first lines I wrote for The Bone Tree, a beginning that remained iteration after iteration but was ultimately cut as the story underneath revealed itself to me.

The story was originally about a boy and his father, about a boy's resentment of his old man and his struggle not to be just like him. Every man I've ever spoken to has felt this feeling in one way or another.

Some loathed their dads and warred against every like-minded instinct they discovered inside themselves. Others, in absolute admiration of their fathers, exhausted themselves trying not to be subsumed by their old man's shadow. Some men I've spoken to believe they've succeeded in these efforts, but most confess they failed in sometimes surprising ways - ways not all of them were unhappy about. Good, bad or ugly, it seems fathers always find a way to stow inside their son's skin.