As the story moves back and forward through his memory, it throws up a geological image of mountains rising "sharp and white, the result of millions of years of tectonic uplift".
Bowker-Wright agrees that is one of the preoccupations with her writing.
A previous award-winning story combined the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland with evolutionary theory.
"I'm really interested in how time moves in people's lives, how you look back and see things and how memory changes over time."
The story changed as she wrote it, shifting the main focus from the husband to the wife. It's another thing she loves about the freedom of fiction.
"Working in science everything's very rigid and you know exactly where you're going with the piece you're writing but with creative writing you can end up in different places."
Bowker-Wright grew up in Hawkes Bay, where her parents, both psychologists, sent her to a Rudolph Steiner school, which she describes as a gentle approach to education. "We got read to a lot."
Her first loves were writing and art but as she went tramping with her father she was drawn to science through growing environmental awareness, plus a yearning for novelty and challenge.
"I wanted to do something where I didn't have to be in an office the whole time."
After Napier Girls High, she studied marine biology and ecology at Victoria University in Wellington. For her MSc thesis she worked with the Department of Conservation on how to improve the survival chances of the endangered brown teal duck.
Since 2008 she has been researching scientific topics such as climate change, water, food and energy for Prime Minister John Key and other senior ministers, while writing fiction as a hobby.
This year she began a masters degree in creative writing at Victoria University and hopes to have a collection of short stories published by the end of the course.
Her literary heroes include Barbara Anderson, whose Hawkes Bay stories inspired her as a teenager, and Canadian Alice Munro, who is known for tracking her characters across a lifetime.
Last throw of the dice pays off
Winning the competition's $1500 novice award came in the nick of time for struggling Auckland writer Toni Spencer.
The 35-year-old Aucklander topped the unpublished writers category with an story about the relationship between a troubled young girl and her old, sick grandfather.
But she admits it was almost the last throw of the dice, as she had been writing unfinished "scratchings" for years with no success.
As she juggled writing with two part-time jobs and motherhood - she has a 3-year-old son and a baby due in February - she decided to push her limits.
Taking a character from her unfinished novel, Spencer wrote a background story from the woman's early life but decided to write it from the grandfather's point of view.
"I wanted to know if I could do it. I've always written female characters and I find if I write people that are completely opposite to me I tend to write better stories."
Category judge Rachael King said the result took her breath away.
BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards
* The awards were established in 1959.
* First prize is $10,000 for published writers.
* Previous winners include Keri Hulme, C.K. Stead, Charlotte Grimshaw and Frank Sargeson.
