A sweeping saga of love and greed set during the mid-nineteenth century
gold rush in New Zealand. Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with
Joseph's mother Lilian, 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, burning heat and icy flood, Harriet Blackstone comes face to
face with the true cost of desire. 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.