Leap of Faith

By: Jenny Patrick
Location: FIC PAT
Genre: New Zealand Historical Fiction

A vivid novel about ingenuity and hard slog, crooks and dreamers, bootleggers and love.

I have read Jenny Patrick I liked Dennistion Rose a lot, and so had to go up the Denniston Plateau to see it. Then I read Landings- within six months I had kayaked the Whanganui River- its story connecting as I paddled the dark moody blue waters of history. But I already have been to the Makatote Viaduct, it is on the road from Rarimu Spiral to National Park. You get a good understanding of what it took for these monsters to be built if you cycle the Old Coach Road from Horopito to Ohakune. It is a great ride and tells the historical journey of the building of that track back in the day.
Now Jenny Patrick has given that story heart, people, reality and meaning- as she does all her amazing yarns about the early devolpment of our nation.This book is no different...



Billy is a young, impressionable dreamer. In 1907, he strikes off on his own, keen to prove himself an able worker on the new railroad. It’s being cut through steep mountainsides and across deep gullies to join the two ends of the Main Trunk Line. Also drawn to the remote worker settlements are miners from Denniston, young men fresh off the boat, sly-groggers, temperance campaigners, women following their menfolk, local Maori and a varied assortment of people after a new life or a quick buck.

Among them is a preacher, Gabriel Locke, who is running from a shady past and determined to avoid the daily grind. With untimely and suspicious deaths, the horrendous weather, impossible deadlines, the rugged landscape and a blossoming romance, it will take a lot more than a leap of faith for this disparate group to complete the railroad and build the magnificent Makatote viaduct .