Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter: An Atmospheric Historical Mystery With a Courageous Heroine Intent on the Truth

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Palmer doesn’t listen but, in any case, the young man soon escapes from the jail and melts back into the unforgiving landscape. A chance visit to the Maritime Museum in Fremantle led her to an exhibition about a family of British settlers involved in the early pearl diving industry.

Readers will fall in love with the characters in this book, especially the courageous, stubborn Eliza, and will find themselves transported to Bannin Bay in the late 1800s. It was an unexpected pleasure to be transported into another world as a young woman stands up to threats from man and nature in this debut novel. However the opinions of most other people are not something that is likely to sway Eliza so she follows any clues she can.I wanted to feel more the atmosphere of the place and the rush for those famous pearls, and learning about the value of the pearls itself. Only his headstrong daughter, Eliza, refuses to believe her father is dead, and sets out on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth. Where the author excels with her vivid descriptions of the dry Kimberly landscape, the community’s streets and residents, and the changing conditions of the sea, effortlessly evoking harsh heat, salt air and crashing waves. I just wish a few more of those nostalgic childhood moments were included in the story to really understand their relationship but it was nonetheless touching. With the earlier timeline, I was hoping for character-development, pearling historical background – how it was first discovered and evolved into booming industry and then its decline.

The story then shifts to 1890s when the reader finds out that Charles has gone missing from the logger during a recent pearling expedition. Apology to the author on her debut book but the overly descriptive writing choked me and choked the story and I couldn’t go on after about 70+ pages. Her father is a pearl master, her brother works by his side, and Eliza is alone when they go on their ten week pearling expeditions. They land in 1886 on the blood-red sands of Bannin Bay, a fictional stand-in for Broome — and like the real town, simultaneously cosmopolitan and isolated, over a thousand miles from the region’s capital.

Set in the harsh, unforgiving land that is outback Western Australia, the constant heat, flies and any number of other insects and things that bite, the reality was vivid. Under the glamour and allure of south sea pearls, Eliza quickly discovers the decaying, stinking and vile underworld of the town which takes her from the sun-scorched streets of Bannin Bay, which soon turn jaded and seedy, full of corruption and deceit but will she see that perhaps things should be left alone and maybe accept her father is lost? She cannot even pester Thomas about it as he immediately heads off to another town saying he has business to attend to.

I think the sensibilities of the author and myself wildly differ, and for this reason, I doubt I will read more of her work. When the ship finally sails in near dusk, its flag fluttering at half-mast, Eliza is told her beloved father disappeared overboard sometime during the previous night and is presumed dead. Lizzie Pook's exquisite prose tugged me in and held me in the eye of the storm, my fingers tightly crossed for Eliza. Her friend Min helped while a new friend, Axel, stayed by Eliza’s side, support and comfort in his manner. I was reminded of a book I loved as a girl about the daughter of a ship’s captain and her adventures across the Southern Pacific.

While I know what colonizers do to natives (as an Indian), the pearl diving community was new to me. The townsfolk suggest mutiny and murder but Eliza refuses to believe her father is dead and knows there’s more to the story than anyone is letting on. Both a breathtaking adventure story and a moving testimony to the lengths we go to for the people we love, it swept me away from the first page .

At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer.Lizzie began her career in women’s magazines, covering everything from feminist motorcycle gangs to conspiracy theorists, before moving into travel writing, contributing to publications including Condé Nast Traveller, Lonely Planet and the Sunday Times. I wish the author had paid more attention to the interior lives of her characters, especially Eliza, whose outline as a daring feminist is promising. The author's novel is based on actual Aussie history, and many of her characters are inspired by real historical figures. 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. It is alive to the complexity of how things must have been, and its consideration of race, gender and sexuality invigorates the era with a freshness that feels organic.