Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter

Eliza Brightwell and her family come to Western Australia from England in 1886 when Eliza is 10. Her father wants to try his luck in a new enterprise so he decides to settle in Bannin on the coast to try his hand, with his brother, as a pearler. Most of the events in the book occur ten years later.

In Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter, Lizzie Pook has based the setting of her book on settlements such as Broome and the conditions of the pearling industry that existed at the time. The characters and plot though are purely fictional.

When the fleet of pearling boats returns to harbour for shelter from the approaching wet season, Eliza's father's boat returns without her father aboard. Her brother, who was also on the ship, says that he does not know what has happened to her father. Local residents are convinced that he must be dead and the local policeman decides that an Aboriginal crew member must be responsible, even though he was not aboard that ship when Eliza's father disappeared. Eliza is convinced that her father is still alive and with the assistance of Alel and Quill she sets out on a lugger determined to find him.

In places the book can be described as bleak as the author describes the drunkedness and drug taking that many of the crew members of pearling luggers indulge in when onshore. Violence abounds as well as superiority complex among some white settlers in regard to people of other nationalities, plus general racism especially towards Aboriginal people. A group of white women in the town have formed their own exclusive group to which Eliza has no wish to join. 

However Eliza does have the friendship of Min, Axel and Quill and is determined to live her own life in her own way, ignoring those who want her to conform.