We are the remembered cord that stretches across the abyss of all that we've forgotten, sang Vela.

Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela, the Samoan song maker, poet, and storyteller--Vela, who was so red and ugly at birth they called him the Cooked; Vela the lonely admirer of pigs and the connoisseur of feet; Vela the lover of song maker Mulialofa. Follow Vela down through centuries as he encounters the single-minded society of the Tagata-Nei and the Smellocracy of Olfact and recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearless warrior queen, before whom travelling chroniclers still bow down today.

A Pacific epic, this novel stretches hundreds of years before the arrival of Papalagi to the present day and fuses the great indigenous oral traditions of storytelling and Western poetry.