Rush oh! - Shirley Barrett

Rush Oh! tells the unforgettable tale of a close knit whaling community in New South Wales, where a bright young woman struggles with sibling rivalry, a stern father, and falling in love with John Beck, a man with a shady past - all against the harshly uncompromising and astonishingly delineated backdrop of a 1908 whaling enterprise.

Eldest daughter Mary tells us her story as a loving document of remembrance, ostensibly for her younger relatives, but as the pages pass we learn how her fierce longing for the itinerant John Beck and the growing complexity of her relationship with her glamorous sister Louisa, herself involved in a forbidden love affair, have shaped and moulded her.

Shirley Barrett's debut novel is a celebration of an exceptional episode in Australian history, when a pod of Killer whales and a family of whalers formed a fond, unique allegiance - the Killer whales, each given individual names and personalities, actually helped the whalers to ensnare their prey in return for the first pickings of the captured animal.