Wholesale Gold

"Up, up, up we go. It is only when we are at eye level with the branch covered in the palest of blossoms that he stops it." This story pulls in themes of family, emigration, ecology and political oppression. Oh, and a gold-hunting adventure involving a flying machine! Gold tells the story of twin boys Esper and Starn who live in a grim world that has been almost laid waste by massive volcanic explosions. Very little grows in Orchard, which used to be a fruit-growing area, but with the death of insects and birds, pollination of the fruit trees is a tedious and precarious undertaking. When the boys discover an intriguing old manuscript in a locked room in their apartment, which tells of gold on one of the forbidden islands the people can see from the coastline, they determine to go on gold-hunt. They construct a glider that takes them far from their home territory, and so begins a whole new adventure for the boys, as they travel from island to island. Written by Gearaldine Mills