The main characters are a couple who has just recently married in the UK. They are not youngsters, as Joseph Blackstone was trying to forget a previous love and Harriet was afraid of remaining a spinster, being forced to work as a governess taking care of somebody else´s children.

So they travel to New Zealand, at that time still unoccupied in huge extensions and buy a small plot of land close of a small river, a day-travel from their only neighbours, the wealthy Orchards. They try to create a farm with animals and a garden, but they don´t understand the soil, the weather, the seasons in their new country, so disaster looms ahead.

Lilian, Joseph's widowed mother, has travelled with them, but she does little else apart from complaining and complaining. She was getting to my nerves.

Around page 80 Joseph discovers a small quantity of the colour (that is, gold) in his farm and he starts trying to dig in secret. However, it´s difficult for his erratic behaviour to go unnoticed.

SUMMARY AT THE BACK OF THE BOOK:

Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from England to New Zealand, along with Joseph's mother Lilian, in search of new beginnings and prosperity, but the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in a creek bed, he hides the discovery from both his wife and mother and becomes obsessed with the riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new goldfields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of the "colour," rush to their destinies and doom.

OPINION

I liked this novel a lot. I don't know why I thought that the author wrote romantic crappy novels. Well, it's not the case. The book is really well-written. The pace is slow, but it is the way it has to be. In spite of the modern point of view, it kept reminding me of the way Emily Brontë or Jane Austen used to write. It is a novel of feelings and the way characters react to events and take decisions, sometimes decisions which make sense but they are oh so wrong.

I love the minor characters: the Orchards are much more interesting than the Blackstones, especially Edwin. Also, Pao Yi, Will, Pare, Billy-boy... even the animals, Billy, Lady --- are more interesting than Lillian, Harriet and Joseph. And that's why I haven't marked this book with a 10.

A week ago.