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Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
For readers of The Light Between Oceans and The Island of Sea Women, a "sensitive and compassionate" (The New York Times Book Review) 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.

Then 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 glamourous 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?

An "extraordinarily vivid" (Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan) 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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    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2022

      The Edgar-nominated Bayard follows up Courting Mr. Lincoln with Jackie & Me, which reimagines Jacqueline Bouvier meeting Jack Kennedy and, as they approach marriage, slowly realizing that she's being polished as the perfect political wife. The New York Times best-selling, multi-award-winning Belfer introduces us to disappointed academic Hannah Larson, who travels to historic Ashton Hall to tend a relative and begins reconstructing events there during the Elizabethan era after her neurodivegent young son, Nicky, discovers a skeleton in the walls. Drawing on ancient texts and modern archaeology to unearth a trans woman's story beneath The Iliad, Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing reveals an Achilles living as a woman with the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite and refusing Odysseus's call to fight until given the body of a woman by Athena and heading into battle to confront an immortal, viciously implacable Helen. From Ford, the author of the mega-best-selling Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Many Daughters of Afong May tells the story of Dorothy Moy, who turns her often painful dissociative mental-health crises into art; when her daughter begins revealing similar tendencies, Dorothy seeks to waylay the consequences of inherited trauma by engaging in a radical therapy that connects her with brave women ancestors (125,000-copy first printing). In debuter Pook's Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter, set in late 1800s Australia, young Englishwoman Eliza Brightwell sets off to find her eccentric father when the pearl-fishing boat he captains returns to port without him (60,000-copy first printing). In Pulley's Cold War-set The Half-Life of Valery K, when former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov is removed from the Gulag and asked to study the effects of radiation in a mysterious town housing nuclear reactors, he's truly worried about how much radiation there is (60,000-copy first printing). In New York Times best-selling author Rimmer's latest, The German Wife of a Nazi scientist pardoned and put to work in the start-up U.S. space program doesn't feel at home among the other NASA wives and confides her husband's SS past to exactly the wrong person (200,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing).

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2022
      Set in 19th-century Western Australia at the height of the pearl trade, this book paints a nuanced portrait of the era as the backdrop for a feminist epic. In her debut novel, Pook introduces us to Eliza Brightwell, a pearler's daughter living in the fictional Bannin Bay of Western Australia. Eliza stands out from the other women of Bannin Bay because of both her plain looks and her independent personality. She's the sort to walk around town in battered boots rather than ride in a carriage like other ladies of her class, much to the disapprobation of the townsfolk. Eliza's early days in Bannin Bay were marked by tragedy with the deaths of her mother and younger brother, and 10 years later, when her father's pearl-diving boat returns from months at sea without him, Eliza refuses to accept his loss as well. She will stop at nothing to find her father, dead or alive. Her quest draws the reader into the tense social climate between colonizers and Aboriginals, the spectacular flora and fauna of Western Australia and Pacifica, as well as the perils of sea voyages at the time. While the setting for this novel is particularly well developed, the characters often feel a bit flat, and there are many missed opportunities. Eliza's single-minded drive to save her family because of tragedy in her past feels familiar, and it doesn't allow Eliza's character to develop over the course of the book; her romantic relationship with a pearler named Axel barely registers. Pook sets up some intriguing female sidekicks--Eliza's childhood friend Min, who becomes a prostitute, and deckhand Knife, who disguises herself as a boy--but their stories are not fully explored. For all of Eliza's resourcefulness, gumption, and guilt, what's missing is a little vulnerability. A work of historical fiction whose setting somewhat outweighs its plot.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 18, 2022
      In Pook’s lush debut, a young woman investigates her father’s disappearance in late-19th-century western Australia. After Charles Brightwell goes missing from his pearler ship, his 20-year-old headstrong daughter, Eliza, who has already lost her mother and younger brother, refuses to believe he’s dead. When she learns that Balarri, Charles’s right-hand man, has been arrested on suspicion of murder, she launches her own investigation. A diary left behind by Charles provides helpful clues that lead Eliza through dangerous areas dominated by the criminal Brotherhood of the Waning Moon and cutthroat business rivals. Eliza receives assistance from Axel Kramer, an attractive German entrepreneur, and a local priest who lends Eliza and Axel his boat so they can resume the search on the small islands that dot the western coast. This final, most dangerous leg of Eliza’s journey tests her physical endurance, bravery, and faith in the belief she can save her father. Though the revelations about Charles’s disappearance feel a bit lackluster after all the adventure, the author offers plenty of sensory details and satisfying character development for Eliza. Overall, Pook casts an intoxicating spell. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary.

    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2022

      DEBUT Beautifully evocative prose describing landscape and people intertwine in this bittersweet story of love, family, and courage. 1886. Bannin Bay, western Australia. It is the end of the pearling season and Eliza Brightwell looks forward to having her father and brother back on shore. But when meeting their lugger, only her brother appears, sharing the horrifying news that their father has disappeared. Convinced that he is still alive, Eliza begins an exhaustive investigation that takes her from the back alleys of Bannin Bay to the outlying islands. Along the way, she will discover secrets that powerful individuals would rather keep hidden and some which may prove ruinous to her family. The small cast of characters, each wonderfully fleshed out, and Eliza's quest are what propel the story. Alongside the characters, it is place that is the book's focus: the ocean and the land complement and enhance Eliza's investigation. VERDICT Readers will delight in the descriptive language that the author employs, so much so that they themselves will hear the sea and feel the desiccation of the heat and loneliness of the land.--Laura Hiatt

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from May 15, 2022
      Men who go down to the sea in ships do not always return. Such is the case of Charles Brightwell, who has fled poverty in London with his wife and children to follow his brother to Western Australia, where untold riches await him as a master pearler. But when Brightwell's ship pulls into port without him after a pearl harvest, his daughter, Eliza, refuses to accept his disappearance. Perhaps an accident has left him adrift in the violent ocean? Could he have been murdered by an Aboriginal crew member? Or is there another reason for his absence, one that alludes to the corruption and blackmail rife throughout Bannin Bay? The social values of the late-nineteenth century make it nearly impossible for a woman to try to solve such mysteries on her own, but Eliza has experienced too many losses in her young life to accept another. With the spirited Eliza at its heart, Pook's evocative debut novel spins a tale of intrigue and deception with a deft combination of gripping pacing and emotional restraint. Travel writer and journalist Pook's heightened observational skills are well employed in this lavish tableau showcasing Australia's vast and exotic natural treasures and fraught history.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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