The Luminaries

The story unfolds in two stories. The first begins in 1866, with a mystery: a politician, Alastair Lauderback, arrives at a cottage to find a woman, unconscious with opium; a Māori man, also unconscious; and a corpse. Lauderback brings the woman to town, where she is arrested for public intoxication and held at the jail. The jailer identifies her as the prostitute Anna Wetherell. The corpse is brought back from the cottage and identified as Crosbie Wells. The town jailer, George Shepard, mounts a murder investigation with Anna as his prime suspect. Anna discovers that a fortune in gold has been inexplicably stitched into the lining of the dress she is wearing. She uses part of it to pay her bail. The second story takes us back nine months earlier to 1865, beginning on the day of Anna's first arrival in New Zealand. She is fresh-faced and full of promise. After a romantic first encounter with a fellow passenger, Emery Staines, she arranges to meet him again. But the scheming fortune-teller Lydia Wells arranges for Anna's purse to be stolen. Realizing that Anna is illiterate, Lydia lies about Emery's whereabouts. Anna is taken under Lydia's wing, and Emery under the wing of Lydia's lover, the former convict Francis Carver. Emery and Carver are interrupted by a Chinese man who shouts at Carver in Cantonese and then tries to kill Carver, who only narrowly escapes. Lydia's husband, Crosbie Wells, returns home from the goldfield having made a strike.

In 1865, Anna is now working at Lydia's fortune parlor. She learns that Lydia is plotting with Carver to steal Crosbie's gold. Carver deceives Emery into thinking that Anna has left for the goldfields. Emery goes to follow her, first agreeing to split his future goldfield winnings with Carver. They register their joint claim under the name "Aurora." Anna is developing a rapport with Crosbie Wells, who is oblivious of what Lydia is plotting. Emery almost drowns upon his arrival on the Hokitika goldfields. Believing Anna to have drowned as well, he befriends a Māori man, Te Rau Tauwhare, and heads into the hills to grieve. Back in Dunedin, Lydia is laying the ground for her plan. She arranges to meet Lauderback the following night on a ship called the Godspeed. We don't know why. Later, interrogated by Crosbie, she spikes his drink- and Anna's - with laudanum (an opium tincture). While they are unconscious, she begins sewing Crosbie's fortune into the seams of one of her gowns. In 1866, an autopsy determines that Crosbie Wells died from a laudanum overdose. Anna returns to his cottage, where she is plagued by strange visions and memories that are not her own. The jailhouse chaplain, Devlin, discovers a fortune hidden in Crosbie's cottage, the gold bars inscribed with the word "Aurora." Emery is missing; Tauwhare believes he is dead and that Anna is possessed by his spirit and so he attempts an exorcism.

In 1865, Lydia is preparing to host a party at the fortune parlor. Anna tells Crosbie that the key to the safe which contains his gold is missing. But he drinks from the spiked decanter and passes out before he can learn more. Lauderback arrives at the Godspeed to meet Lydia, only to find Carver, who is posing as Crosbie Wells. Using the gold-filled dresses as leverage, Carver blackmails Lauderback into giving him the ship. Carver then comes to the fortune parlor, intending to murder Crosbie and steal his identity, freeing himself from his convict past. But Anna has warned Crosbie in time. Crosbie scars Carver's face with a knife, to spite him, then goes to the Godspeed to try and recover his gold. But the captain mistakes him for a stowaway. At Hokitika, Crosbie jumps overboard, and washes up on Māori land, where he encounters Emery and Tauwhare. The dresses containing the fortune end up in a salvage yard, unclaimed. Lydia throws Anna out of her house. Anna's only resource is a ticket to the Hokitika goldfields given to her by the whoremonger Dick Mannering. She goes there. Mannering exploits her growing laudanum addiction to force her into prostitution. The gold-filled dresses end up in her possession, though she has no idea what they contain. In 1866, Crosbie Wells is buried. Anna searches in vain for Emery, who has vanished without a trace. Lydia arrives in Hokitika.

In 1865, Emery returns to Hokitika and catastrophically reunites with Anna, now heavily pregnant and addicted to opium. Anna retreats to Chinatown. The gold in her dresses is discovered by a Chinese man, Quee Long, who begins excavating it in secret while she is unconscious. Carver reunites with Emery. Emery lets slip that he has met Crosbie Wells, and Carver threatens Anna in order to force Emery to reveal where Crosbie is. There is a fight, as a consequence of which Anna miscarries. Devastated, Anna tells Emery she never wants to see him again. Emery stakes the Aurora gold claim on a tailing pile in order to sabotage his and Carver's joint investment. Quee, prevented by racist laws from digging as the white men do, pretends the gold he took from Anna's dresses originated from this tailing pile. When Emery won't play along, Quee smelts the gold into bullion and engraves the bars with the word "Aurora." Exasperated, Emery takes the gold to Crosbie's cottage, and tells him everything. In 1866, Lydia goes about framing Anna for Crosbie Wells's murder. She plants Anna's purse at Crosbie's cottage, secreting an empty phial of laudanum inside it. Others in the town are beginning to turn against Anna, who is starting to fear that Emery is dead, and that she herself is going insane.

The Godspeed, captained by Carver, is returning to Hokitika. One of the ship's passengers discovers Emery trapped in a crate below-decks, and is terrified when Emery suddenly, inexplicably, receives a bullet in his chest. Meanwhile, the men of Hokitika are beginning to circle. They meet in a secret council, which is interrupted by a stranger. Back in the present, the Godspeed is wrecked. Carver, coming to shore, is accosted once again by Sook Yongsheng, who is avenging the deaths of his family in the opium wars. Emery washes up on the beach. To satisfy the opium addiction that he has inherited from Anna, he goes to Chinatown. But when he lights the pipe, Anna receives the hit. She is arrested and taken to jail to await trial.

Anna is tried for murder. Emery, her alibi for the night of the murder, is still missing. Moody, a lawyer who recently arrived in town, refuses to act in her defense, as he believes the case is indefensible. Due to a mix-up with the wreckage from the Godspeed, Moody ends up with Lauderback's trunk. In it, he discovers a series of letters written from Crosbie to Lauderback - the final piece of the puzzle that explains Lauderback's presence on the night Crosbie died. Moody shares the letters with Anna. Lydia hosts a séance to make contact with Emery, intending to implicate Anna further, but instead she channels the spirit of Sook, and inadvertently accuses Carver of murder. Emery is found at last by Tauwhare and is reunited with Anna. Together with Moody, Anna and Emery concoct an elaborate and imaginative defense that exposes Lydia and Carver's crimes.