In Festival of Miracles Alice Tawhai has created a bittersweet New Zealand wonderland that is at once luminous and sensual, tragic and fated. The stories in this debut collection are set from the Hokianga to Bluff, and they are populated by a stunning range of characters - circus workers, tattoo artists, bikies, mail-order brides, beautiful victims, wild children, immigrants, tangata whenua - who never cease to believe that they will find perfect things amidst the human imperfection of their lives: miracles, not misfortune.