'It is Mary who you will miss like a sister. If this is your first book, get it for free. gives savour to a highly enjoyable and unusual yarn' Sydney Morning Herald Get Rush Oh audiobook by Shirley Barrett on Speechify and enjoy the best listening experience. Swinging from Mary's hopes and disappointments, both domestic and romantic, to the challenges that beset their tiny whaling operation, Rush Oh! is a celebration of an extraordinary episode in Australian history, when a family of whalers formed a fond, unique allegiance with a pod of frisky Killer whales - and in particular, a Killer whale named Tom. But hers is not the only romance to blossom amidst the blubber. It's a season marked not only by the sparsity of whales and the vagaries of weather, but also by the arrival of John Beck, an itinerant whale man with a murky past, on whom Mary promptly develops an all-consuming crush.

When Mary Davidson, the eldest daughter of a whaling family in Eden, New South Wales, sets out to chronicle the particularly difficult season of 1908, the story she tells is poignant and hilarious, filled with drama and misadventure. Swinging from Mary's own hopes and disappointments to the challenges that have beset her family's whaling operation, Rush Oh is an enchanting blend of fact and fiction that's as much the story of its gutsy narrator's coming-of-age as it is the celebration of an extraordinary episode in history. 'Hugely funny and peopled with a cast of characters I came to treasure like my own friends, Rush Oh! reminded me why I love reading.' Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites The captivating debut novel from the winner of the Camera D'Or

Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett