The Denniston Rose

By: Jenny Pattrick

Narrated by: Kate Hood

Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

The bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston, isolated high on a plateau above New Zealand's West Coast, is a place that makes or breaks those who live there. All sorts arrive here to work the mines and bring down the coal: ex-goldminers down on their luck, others running from the law or from a woman or worse. They work alongside recruited English miners, solid and skilled, who scorn these disorganised misfits and want them off the hill.

Into this chaotic community come five-year-old Rose and her mother, riding up the incline, at night, during a storm. No one knows what has driven them there, but most agree the mother must be desperate to choose Denniston; worse, to choose that drunkard, Jimmy Cork, as a bedfellow. The indomitable Rose is left to fend for herself, finding allies and enemies in her struggle to secure a place in this tough and often aggressive community.

©2003 Jenny Pattrick (P)2004 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

A wonderful, complex historical novel

Jenny Pattrick is a fine writer who both captures and teaches the reader in New Zealand history.

Well done

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

A wonderful story narrated with passion strong characters so indicative of west coasters who now are coming to terms with the Pike river mining disaster with the loss of 29.A challenging environment with inhabitants to match. Jenny Pattrich has captured this all so well.

A great tale set on the Denniston Plateau

If you have ever been to this hard bleak plateau you can totally get this story.
It is cold isolated but covered in history in respect of the people who lived and worked there. Now a monument to those times.
However this story was destroyed by the narrator who clearly could not do accents but tried all the time mixing everything up making a mockery of the characters which distracted from the whole experience.
Please re record this book audible if I was the author I would cry.

a good story strugglingling to break through.

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

someone who likes historical fiction set in the 1800's concerning coal mining in new Zealand.

What will your next listen be?

north and south by Elizabeth gaskel.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Kate Hood?

because it is an austrailian production and I haven't listened to any books from that part of the world I don't know of any other narrator who could do it better.

Any additional comments?

if it had been written in the first person it would have flowed a lot better then the llistener could have become more involved with the characters and their lives. it was obviously the author's first book.