Treasure

Paperback, 215 x 138mm

Published 1992

American preacher Deane Omo flies in to the Wellington mission of his family’s Charismatic church to heal the sick, and to bring his cousin Mayhew Quitman back into the fold. In a flat high above the city, Kath and Martin play out the difficult early months of their relationship. And at the National Museum, Frances Kirby, ailing and nearing retirement, receives in the mail a black disc with mysterious properties.

Treasure is an audacious novel in which unlikely worlds collide. In settings as various as the Museum’s Beetle Room, a downtown funeral parlour, and the Christian settlement of White Steppes, North Carolina, Elizabeth Knox brings to sensuous life a group of hypnotically real characters, then draws them together in the White Steppes Bethesda’s big New Zealand production: The Miracle Healing Rally.

Elizabeth Knox is the author of nine novels for adults: After Z-Hour (1987), Treasure, (1992, shortlisted for the 1993 NZ Book Awards), Glamour and the Sea (1996), The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood (Paremata 1989, Pomare 1994 and Tawa 1998), The Vintner’s Luck (1998), Black Oxen (2001), Billie’s Kiss (2002), Daylight (2003) and The Angel's Cut (2009). She has also published Dreamhunter and Dreamquake, a two book series for young adults. Dreamhunter won the 2006 Esther Glen Award for New Zealand children’s literature, and Dreamquake won an American Library Association Michael L. Printz Honor Award for Young Adult Literature in 2008. A collection of Elizabeth's nonfiction called The Love School: Personal Essays was published to acclaim in 2008. It was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in the Autobiography category. Elizabeth is one of New Zealand's most successful writers and has a keen readership both in New Zealand and overseas.