It was soon followed by her fifth novel Dogside Story (2001) centred on a small seaside Māori community. Reviewer Simone Drichel observed that although the book shared some similarities in setting and characters with Potiki, the "nature of the challenges" faced by Maori had changed in the intervening years: "For the first time ... it is not primarily the interaction with Pakeha that poses a challenge for Maori, but Maoridom itself." By this time, Grace had become an established and well-known writer. Elspeth Sandys observed in 2001 that the release of a new novel by Grace was "one of the more significant events in [New Zealand's] literary calendar". Her sixth novel, Tu (2004), was based on the experiences of the Māori Battalion in Italy during the Second World War, and in particular the experiences of Grace's father and other family members who were part of the Battalion. She described the experience of writing a book about "men and especially men at war" as a "wonderful challenge". Reviewer Iain Sharp praised Grace's compassionate treatment of the subject, concuding: "The crowning achievement of this fine writer's career, Tu will surely become one of the classics of our literature". In 2013 it was adapted for the theatre by New Zealand playwright Hone Kouka. Small Holes in the Silence, published in 2006, was Grace's first collection of short stories since 1987. Lawrence Jones in the New Zealand Review of Books praised the variety of stories but felt it did not meet the "sheer sustained emotional engagement of the earlier collections", and James O'Sullivan for the Taranaki Daily News equally found the stories "less than memorable". Both reviewers felt that the short story "Eben", about a mentally disabled homeless man, was the strongest story in the collection. In 2008 she published a children's book, Maraea and the Albatrosses / Ko Maraea Me Nga Toroa, illustrated by her brother Brian Gunson. Grace was approached around this time by the family of Ned Nathan, a Māori Battalion soldier who was wounded in Crete, and his wife Katina, a Cretan woman who nursed him back to health, and asked to write the story of their relationship. The resulting non-fiction biography, Ned & Katina: a true love story, was published in 2009. At this time Grace put aside her draft novel (later to be published as Chappy in 2015) in order to concentrate on family responsibilities, including caring for