Band Of Gold by Deborah Challinor
HarperCollins, $36.99
I started this romp through the Australian goldmines without realising it was the third book in a series, but quickly realised it didn't matter. Each book stands securely on its own.
New Zealand writer Deborah Challinor (now based in Australia) re-introduces her characters assuredly. You quickly learn to admire the brave and beautiful heroine, Kitty, and her husband Rian Farrell. And catch up with their history on the good ship Katipo too.
Challinor is a professional and meticulous historian and it shows. By the time I finished the novel I had a working knowledge of 1860s gold mining, including how they built the shafts and how they got oxygen down there so the miners could breathe. Readers also learn where the mines of Ballarat sit in relationship to Melbourne, how brutal and short lives could be during the gold rush - and how surprisingly well set-up goldfield towns were, with patisseries, pubs and brothels.
Challinor also digs deep into the undercurrents of the goldrush culture and the harsh ruling style of the colonial Australian government. She tackles the unchallenged racism of early Australia - not just against Aboriginals, but also against the Chinese. And how, in the case of the Chinese, it went both ways and was endemic in early New Zealand as well.
She highlights and brings to life the battle of the sexes which was women against other women, rather than men, as madams fought the rare wives on the goldfields for their husbands.
And she is not frightened of believable, sexy, sex scenes or killing off her characters when they become a burden. In this story Kitty's wan and ever-rejected would-be lover gets the chop.
In other words, this is a historical romance with genuine teeth recounting a piece of history that could have been easily lost, in a readable, straightforward style.
Its minor downfall is the way Challinor sometimes dollops out her back story or facts (things the reader needs to know) in over-large lumps, rather than threading it through her descriptive and thoroughly enjoyable novel.
But I'm only really pulling at straws, trying to tease out that this is a romp rather than a serious novel. The answer of course is that too many ends are tied off, too many questions answered, too many adjectives used and too many of the serious themes Challinor touches on in her story are only partly explored, for this to be high fiction.
Challinor has already written a second goldrush adventure for Kitty and Rian. This one is set in Dunedin, New Zealand. Fans can expect another highly readable story that improves the mind in a thoroughly enjoyable way.
Carroll du Chateau is an Auckland reviewer.
