Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter

by Lizzie Pook

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sea Adventures

Synopsis

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.

Release date: June 14, 2022

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 320

Sample

Prologue

PROLOGUE
Bannin Bay, Western Australia, 1886

Eliza has never seen a land that looks so very much like blood. From the deck of the steamer it glistens, stretching wide in a lazy, sun-blurred smear.

She raises a hand against the glare, taking to tiptoes to squint over the polished guard rail. Before her, red dirt jitters in the heat and the sea is a boisterous, blistering green. There is something unsettling about the weariness of the breeze, hot and filled with the mineral stench of seagrass.

“We made it, my loves, we did it. Marvelous.” Her father’s oiled mustache lifts upward as he grins. He turns from his family to look out across the strange landscape—mirrored bays and shadowy crags the color of crushed insects.

This journey will be what saves them. Father had told them so over mutton and gravy back home. He regaled them with tales of pearl shells first, their shining nacres of champagne, silver, and cream. He was to work with his brother to launch a fleet of luggers, hauling shell to sell in bulk to the Americans and the French. The world was already lapping up the spoils of Bannin Bay, turning mother-of-pearl into buttons and the prettiest pistol handles you ever did see.

They’d watched, with jaws slack, as Father had pulled out his old atlas, folded down the page, and smoothed his palm across the place called New Holland. “Look.” He showed them, trailing a finger down its western coast. “When we’re there, we will be able to forget about all that has happened.”

The beach in front of Eliza flares white and harsh. Dunes, sharp with swaying saltbush, ripple far into the distance. Below the rail, gulls skirl around a jetty that unfurls like a crocodile’s crooked tail into a long gut of mangroves.

Her father gives the order and leads them steadily off the ship—her uncle Willem, her aunt Martha, followed closely by her mother and brother. Thomas is a head taller than her now, conspicuous in this heat in his short trousers and smart pressed jacket. Glancing back, she can see the hunched shoulders of stevedores. In grubby vests and moleskins to the knee, they lug what remains of the Brightwells’ belongings out of the ship.

Grasping at her mother’s skirts, Eliza steps down onto the jetty. As she does, and with the speed of a knife over lard, her feet slide from beneath her and she thuds, backside first, onto the planks. The odor is obscene, but she places a flat palm on the greasy wood. There are fish scales smeared about and stringy meat going crisp in the sun. “Come, Eliza. Brush yourself off.” Her mother extends a broad, comforting hand.

Eliza rubs her elbows, smooths her skirts, and lets her mother tug her to her feet. The sun has scattered coins of light across the sea; they make her eyes swim with stars. Looking up, she finds the sky obscured by the crescent of her mother’s silk hat, the brim so absurdly wide she has seen men cowering from it back home. How odd she seems against this strange new place, Eliza thinks, like a dragonfly, once resplendent, marooned in a bucket of old slop water.

They continue down the jetty, her father and brother striding ahead. Sweat pools in the crooks of her elbows and at the creases behind her knees. Beside them, men watch unflinchingly as they pass, turning caulking mallets, hammers, and dirtied blades in rough hands. Her mother pays them no heed—an easy task for someone accustomed to admiration—and looks instead across the shoreline and out to the shot silk of the sea.

“You see, my girl, it’s beautiful.” She smiles and kneels to the height of her daughter. Eliza hears the rush of liquid before it happens. Sees the movement at the corner of her eye but turns away a heartbeat too late. With a sigh it splashes across them—thick with chunks and foul smelling. It slides with grim slowness down Eliza’s face. They turn together toward a man who has frozen in position, sun-grizzled as a raisin and with only a few gray teeth. He holds a barrelful of fish guts under an arm, and a cracked palm raised in surrender.

“My apologies,” he gasps, although a smile plays about his lips. “You ladies got right in the way. I beg your pardon.” He stands aside to let them pass. “Please.”

Her mother gives a huff as she jerks her daughter sharply onward. Smearing the guts from her cheeks, Eliza turns to see the man remove his hat. She watches as he hawks a knot of phlegm from his throat, depositing it at his feet with a gluey string of spittle. Her mother quickens to an appalled trot, still pulling at Eliza’s arm.

The words barely reach her before they are snatched by the breeze. Four words she’ll always remember.

“Welcome to Bannin Bay,” they say.