A Sky Full of Fire

Alice and her ‘Aunt Hen’ arrive at our very own wonder of the world, the Pink and White Terraces, in 1886, as the mountain prepares its worst beneath them. Hen is hiding under her large hat shrouded with tulle and showing jaunty rings, a dramatic touch, suggesting someone not recently bereaved but in communion with the dead. Indeed she is a charlatan, playing psychic tricks on paying customers and hiding behind her fakery. Alice is escaping the life of a working girl in Melbourne. Despite her horrible past she is beautiful and savvy, with a kind heart for fellow sufferers. She deserves better than Hen. They are not the only tricky characters in Tarawera in the days before the mountain erupts. Another newcomer, Cyprian Marsh, has been on Alice’s trail from Australia.

There are characters already in Tarawera, gathered around the Rotomahana Hotel: a dancing priest and doomsday prophet, abusers, innkeepers and a phantom canoe of Māori warriors. Mohi is a local lad, a favourite of the village, who notices things other people miss. He’s at school when not helping out making coin from the tourists. Their stories mingle with Alice’s backstory, of what led her to the brothels of Melbourne, the man who took her away, and all this slowly unfolds to her present situation, faking ghosts in Hen’s seances. We watch a slight of hand there, trick there, are given false leads and exposures. And beneath it all is the constant rumble of the mountain.

We all know what happens next in Tarawera 1886…the mountain explodes. The decisions of our characters as they hide in the hotel really do mean life or death. ‘…they could be buried alive by the ash, mud and stones falling from the sky, suffocated by sulphurous gases (the stench had increased tenfold) or crushed by the falling timbers of the hotel. They might fall into a crack in the ground, which shook every few minutes as it tore itself apart, or be incinerated by one of the fireballs now shooting past the window with alarming regularity. With the lamps extinguished, the only illumination now came from burning buildings nearby, the arcs of glowing stones and flashes of lightning.’

I won’t give away the ending. This is a colourful romp through a very dramatic event in our history.

Author: Cristina Sanders Blog

Novelist, trail runner, book reviewer and blogger. View all posts by Cristina Sanders Blog