This novel tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Cornish son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the ship over to Australia, and discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive the other compulsive. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. This bet changes both their lives forever.
Peter Carey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carey_(novelist) won the 1988 Booker Prize for this novel.
Gillian Armstrong brought this to the screen in 1997 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119843/?ref_=sr_1) with Ralph Fiennes as Oscar Hopkins and Cate Blanchett as Lucinda Leplastrier.
544 pages in Faber and Faber paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0571270163
Peter Carey