Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith is a novel that opens the door to the depths that greed can take people to and the heroic efforts that often balance the scales. In this story, Smith again visits Africa where the Kitchenerville Gold Fields are his subject. It is a story about one group of wealthy men who are attempting to gain control of the gold market by sacrificing a collection of gold mines intentionally, thereby manipulating the ongoing rise of the price of gold overall. By recognizing the weaknesses some men have for gambling or power in general, they place key people in positions of control and then orchestrate a mining disaster by manipulating them into drilling through the rock formation known as the Big Dipper. Geologists have separately confirmed that beneath this serpentine rock layer is likely to be an enormous amount of water, and one small group has access to enough reports from the five mines making up the Kitchenerville field that they see the entire picture where others are simply speculating. They rewrite the reports to make it appear as if the water is actually a strike beyond compare and give this information to the man in charge of the central mine who works for The Sonder Ditch Mining Company.

Manfred Steyner is plagued by several issues that complicate his life and owes his position of power in Hurry Hirchsfeld's mine to the fact that he married Hurry's granddaughter Teresa. In a marriage that is purely token and status, Manfred uses this position to gamble (although usually with disastrous consequences and amassing a great deal of debt) and finds himself at the mercy of a group of powerful men in the process. They give him the doctored reports showing a huge strike beyond the Big Dipper and instruct him to quickly and quietly penetrate the barrier and be the first to make them all rich. Manfred ignores the advice of his new surface manager Rod Ironsides and gives him the order to secretly drill through. Rod does so, reluctantly and under duress as his job is dependent upon his compliance, but somehow senses the looming catastrophe and tries to take steps to ensure the safety of those under Manfred's employ. Falling in love with Teresa is a by product that he never expects, but cherishes, and Manfred's knowledge of their affair makes the situation all the more volatile. When the Big Dipper is penetrated, Rod finds himself going down into the shaft with one volunteer, Big King Nkulu. The shaft is now a river that wiped out the crew that drilled, through and Rod is attempting to reconnect the blast matte that he created for this eventuality. No one can foresee the chain of events that leaves Big King to save his boss and the other mines in the Kitchenerville fields. In a story that has all the elements of greed, lust, power, adultery, violence and love; the reader is never without excitement.