The Pearl of Tagai Town

Primarily set in far northeast Queensland in the decades leading up to, during and immediately after the Second World War, Lenora Thaker’s debut novel, The Pearl of Tagai Town, is the tale of one young woman’s extraordinary grit and vision for her life. It’s also a love story to warm the coldest of hearts.

Pearl is growing up in a multicultural community in a shantytown that rises from a swamp just outside a remote coastal town. Pearl’s family is from the Eastern Torres Strait on her father’s side and the Western Torres Strait on her mother’s side. Their friends, family and neighbours work on fishing boats, take in laundry, clean kole (white) people’s houses, and raise their families. It’s a precarious existence, and the arrival of the war renders it more so, but their community comes together at church each week, welcomes Black American soldiers when the war brings them to their part of the world, and they all pitch in to help each other where they can.

Pearl and her best friend Curly Anne have plans – for the annual dance and far beyond. When Pearl’s bravery and initiative result in an offer to work for a kole woman in her haberdashery, it’s a life-changing opportunity – even if her mother, Ama Rose, is sceptical about kole bosses. Ama Rose is even more doubtful about Teddy, a kole boy and the son of the local banker, who has taken a shine to Pearl.

This immersive, propulsive novel is a clear-eyed portrait of a time and a community navigating racism, including horrifying violence, segregation and oppression, wartime tragedies, and the general hardships and joys of life. The characters are irresistible, and the local languages woven throughout are as evocative as Thaker’s narrative. This is the kind of book you’ll want to read again immediately, and will appeal to fans of Kate Grenville, Pip Williams and Anita Heiss.