The NZ fiction journey begins

Since I've finally finished reading Nancy Wake - which I wanted to finish by the end of 2012 but just didn't get round to it - my NZ fiction journey can begin!
You have seen me mention it before, but just to recap... I am reading only New Zealand fiction this year for three reasons: #1 I feel like we give international authors too much of the spotlight, with our books squished into dusty back shelves in our own book stores. #2 I want to become a New Zealand author one day, and I'm working on an epic three-part series called Missing Since Tuesday, so I want to learn what I can from those who have gone before me. #3 Apart from maybe reading something by a NZ author in school (which I can't remember but I'm sure it must have been in the curriculum somewhere), I have never read a book by a New Zealand author and of that I'm a little ashamed.

So here I go, and I'm starting with a lesser-known book called Flashback Forward by John Cairney. I should probably start with something a little more well known, but I've just been hankering to get into this one since I bought it over a year ago, so I'm starting with it.

Here's what it's about:

Tam Cochrane is a sickly lad, confined to his bed in Glasgow in the 1880s. His only experience of adventure and the outside world is through books - that is until his father decides to sell up and head for New Zealand. As they take the four-month journey by ship, Tam's health begins to improve, and with it signs of a new Tam, fully engaging in the real world. After arriving in their new country, the family heads to Rotorua and Tarawera, only to be caught in the volcanic eruption of 1886. Having been concussed, Tam wakes up, groggy but still the fit young man he'd been growing into, except he finds he is in Napier, emerging from the ruins of the 1931 earthquake. What has happened to the last 45 years? Why is he still a young man? And who is the other Tam Cochrane, now living like a recluse back in Glasgow? An intriguing story, it is set among the cataclysmic events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and deals with identity, with finding out who we really are in life and with living it to the full.

Synopsis from Google Books