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by Lizzie Pook
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.
"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." —Booklist (starred review)
"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." —Library Journal
"Lush.... Pook casts an intoxicating spell." —Publishers Weekly
"[Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter] atmospheric, evocative descriptions of the Western Australian landscape are an absolute masterclass in place—as well as being a proper, page-turning adventure." —Ellery Lloyd, author of The Club
"Lizzie Pook's meticulous research delivers an extraordinarily vivid tale in Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter. 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. I could not put this book down. Lizzie Pook is an author to watch!" —Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Warsaw Orphan
This information about Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lizzie Pook is a London-based travel writer and journalist whose work has taken her to some of the farthest-flung parts of the planet, from the trans-Himalayas—in search of elusive snow leopards—to the vast, uninhabited east coast of Greenland. She has written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times (London), Lonely Planet, and Condé Nast Traveler. Lizzie is the author of Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge and Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter. Visit her at LizziePook.com or connect with her on Twitter @LizziePook.
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