The colour - Rose Tremain

Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph's mother Lillian, emigrate from England in search of new beginnings and prosperity in New Zealand. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek, he guiltily hides the discovery from his wife and mother and is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their destinies. Harriet bravely decides to pursue her own journey towards an uncertain future. But nothing has prepared her for what happens when she too arrives at the gold-diggings. Amid squalor and confusion, amid burning heat and icy flood, she comes face to face with the true cost of desire. Beautifully written, hauntingly evocative and by turns both moving and terrifying, The Colour is the story of a quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and in the process discover what it is that makes men and women happy.