Dr. Hana Tuhoe has spent ten years building a career in London - marine ecology publications, a position at UCL, a flat in Hackney, a life that is professionally successful and personally managed. When the Waitemata Harbour Ecological Restoration Initiative offers her the lead ecologist role, she tells herself it's a career opportunity. Twelve months. A properly resourced, co-governed, matauranga-integrated project. The kind of work she's been training for.

She doesn't mention that the iwi resource manager is Tane Ngata - the man she left without saying goodbye to a decade ago.

*The Auckland Clause* is literary romance about professional competence, cultural inheritance, and the particular difficulty of returning to a place where everyone knows what you did. It follows Hana as she relocates to Auckland for the twelve-month project, navigates the working relationship she didn't choose, and confronts the gap between the person she became in London and the person she was when she left.