Point of origin

the long version

Peter Henessey is ambitious, but still fighting the bogies of his father's failure and his brother's death. He is pitting his touch of genius with machinery, his drive to improve the old and invent the new, against a world he thinks hostile - the attractive but restricting society of Christchurch, New Zealand. When he meets Gillian Sedgley, who lives at the centre of this circle of the Establishment - the 'families off the first four boats' now solidly protected by big fortunes, the best schools, the trappings of authority - Gillian recognises in him all that he is trying to submerge under a veneer of calculating ambition. Their love story is told with a blend of passion and humour.