When Hulme was eighteen, she had a dream about a mute, mysterious boy with long hair and green eyes. To encourage her daughter (the eldest of six siblings), Hulme's mother converted a sun porch into a writing studio. By that time, she had already demonstrated her potential as a writer, creating poems and short stories and rewriting published stories that she thought she could improve. Keri Hulme was born on Main Christchurch, New Zealand, to a mother of mixed Maori and Scots heritage and an English father. The story attempts to answer questions about how one heals deep-seated, emotional pain, how one becomes true to oneself, and how one finds love.

At the same time, however, the problems that are presented in this story have universal relevance. The story is, in fact, filled with allusions to the Maori culture and many of the challenges that the Maori people face, those common struggles caused by the colonization of an indigenous people. The Bone People has been praised for its story and for the way it is written, which is said to reflect the intonation and style of the Maori language. As of 2006, it was the only novel that she has published. The Bone People, which began as a short story, took Hulme twelve years to write. Then the book went on to win the prestigious Booker Prize (1985), a coveted literary award.

Hulme won New Zealand's Pegasus Prize for Literature (1984) for The Bone People. At the story's core, however, are three people who struggle very hard to figure out what love is and how to find it. This is in no way a romance it is filled with violence, fear, and twisted emotions. It is unusual in the telling, the subject matter, and the form of love that the story depicts. The Bone People, published in 1984, is an unusual story of love.

Author of the bone people