This vibrant historical novel revealing the pearl diving industry and onshore community it supported, is set in Western Australia. MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER’S DAUGHTER at first feels like a YA story, as we meet young Eliza arriving with her family on a remote shore. But the swift passing of years brings us to a more adult tone as Eliza, now Miss Brightwell of a respected pearling company, awaits the return of her father’s flagship.
Shells of oysters were harvested from depths and sold for nacre, the shiny interior, with actual pearls being a rarity in the industry. We learn that many people, men and even women, from minority groups or poor families, were hijacked and forced to do the perilous ‘hard hat’ diving work. The pearler's daughter, 20-year-old Eliza Brightwell, stands to lose everything in 1896 when her father’s ship, the Starling, limps home without him aboard. Nobody saw what happened. Eliza’s brother Thomas has to rush off and find a way to stall the company debt payments, leaving Eliza to seek her father Charles. While it feels strange that the young woman does this by visiting her father’s writing desk and the local police depot, the author has laid a trail of breadcrumbs for this heroine to follow, in order to reveal many slices of life.
Bannin Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia has been a pearling centre for many years, and this tale set in a fictional town near Bannin doesn’t pull punches. Whether it’s getting a slop bucket of fish guts spilled on her dress, or arguing with Sergeant Palmer, who arrests an Aboriginal worker, or finding her way into a Tong den and a house of ill repute, Eliza faces the hard reality of a life that the polite young women of town never see. She’s not afraid to board pearl diving luggers, or go out to the bush. Among the creatures met are tamed monkeys, talking pet birds, sharks and salties – saltwater crocodiles.
To some readers, the adventure with its focus on rough treatment of working people will be hard to read. A note at the end from author Lizzie Pook explains that her debut novel has been based on fact, including letters of the day protesting the ill treatment of native peoples. A degree of objectivity is required by the modern post-colonial reader, and this may be why Eliza sometimes feels too calm and objective herself. MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER’S DAUGHTER is strong on descriptive writing, with the salt wind and sun never far from the brave heroine’s escapades.
For readers of The Light Between Oceans and The Island of Sea Women, a feminist adventure story set against the backdrop of the dangerous pearl diving industry in 19th-century Western Australia, about a young English woman who sets off to uncover the truth about the disappearance of her eccentric father.
Western Australia, 1886. After months at sea, a slow boat makes its passage from London to the shores of Bannin Bay. From the deck, young Eliza Brightwell and her family eye their strange, new home. Here is an unforgiving land where fortune sits patiently at the bottom of the ocean, waiting to be claimed by those brave enough to venture into its depths. An ocean where pearl shells bloom to the size of soup plates, where men are coaxed into unthinkable places and unspeakable acts by the promise of unimaginable riches.
Ten years later, the pearl-diving boat captained by Eliza’s eccentric father returns after months at sea—without Eliza’s father on it. Whispers from townsfolk point to mutiny or murder. Headstrong Eliza knows it’s up to her to discover who, or what, is really responsible.
As she searches for the truth, Eliza discovers that beneath the glamorous veneer of the pearling industry, lies a dark underbelly of sweltering, stinking decay. The sun-scorched streets of Bannin Bay, a place she once thought she knew so well, are teeming with corruption, prejudice, and blackmail. Just how far is Eliza willing to push herself in order to solve the mystery of her missing father? And what family secrets will come to haunt her along the way?
A transporting feminist adventure story based on Lizzie Pook’s deep research into the pearling industry and the era of British colonial rule in Australia, Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter is ultimately about the lengths one woman will travel to save her family.
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