Thunder Rift is his first published novel.
Thunder turns out to be a wormhole which has appeared in the solar system near Jupiter.
This causes enormous worldwide difficulty, chaos of all sorts, but the story focuses on one family. Young Taria's parents loose their jobs in New Zealand and decide to temporarily move to China where whey are at least offered minimal positions. Without giving away any specific details, the family's experience in China is tragic, and leaves Taria with deep emotional scars. Since humans always tend to assume they are the centre of the universe, the theory about the wormhole is that since it seems to be a doorway, it must have been placed there either for us to use, or perhaps to facilitate an invasion of Earth. Whichever it is, Earth must mount an exploratory mission.