The Denniston Rose | Jenny Pattrick

Set in the bleak 1880s coal mining settlement of Denniston - an isolated community set high on a plateau above New Zealand's West Coast - five-year-old Rose and her mother mysteriously arrive in this chaotic community filled with ex-gold miners down on their luck, ruffians on the run from the law, and seasoned and embittered English miners.

No one knows what has driven the two to the area, but most agree the mother must be desperate - or worse - to not only choose Denniston as a residence but to eventually select local drunk Jimmy Cork as her bedfellow, leaving her indomitable daughter to fend for herself, struggling to secure a place of her own in a tough and aggressive town.

Jenny Pattrick is a best-selling author and is also known as a jeweller. She has been President of the Crafts Council of New Zealand, chaired the Boards of Creative New Zealand, the New Zealand Drama School and the NZ School of Dance, and for the last four International Festivals in Wellington has chaired the Writers and Readers Festival Committee. She has had short stories and two dramatised series broadcast on National Radio, as well as writing the bestselling THE DENNISTON ROSE, THE HEART OF COAL, CATCHING THE CURRENT.