The year is 1890, and stream tin has been sensationally discovered in southern Stewart Island of New Zealand. Elizabeth - young, gentile, sheltered, and fresh off the boat from Scotland - has arrived in remote and rugged Port Pegasus to meet George, her betrothed, who is running the only miner's hotel there. But it is a chance meeting with miner who ends up capturing her heart, convincing her that her future is far different from what her family back home had in mind.
Playing out alongside is the professional struggle between Professor James Black of Otago University, whose fervour to find the tin-lode caused the whole crazy tin rush in the first place, and his nemesis, staunch government geologist Alexander Mackay, who becomes hell bent on bringing everyone to their senses. As the rush implodes, the end is climatic for all concerned.
A well-researched story of historical fiction which accurately records New Zealand's only tin rush, The Tin Cry takes its name from the scientific term describing the noise a bar of tin makes when it is continually bent back and forth until it eventually breaks.