The Pearl Sister

The fourth installment in the Seven Sisters series follows CeCe (Celaeno) D'Aplièse, the fourth of six adopted sisters raised by a wealthy, enigmatic man they call Pa Salt at his estate, Atlantis, on Lake Geneva. Each sister is named after one of the stars in the Pleiades constellation, and before his death, Pa Salt left each of them coordinates and clues pointing to their birth families. CeCe's coordinates lead to Broome, a remote pearling town on the northwest coast of Australia, and Pa's letter directs her to investigate a woman named Kitty Mercer. His lawyer, Georg Hoffman, provides CeCe with an inheritance and a black-and-white photograph of an older man and a teenage boy beside a pickup truck.

In December 2007, CeCe flies alone from London to Bangkok, grief-stricken over Pa Salt's death and the emotional loss of her closest sister, Star (Asterope), who has pulled away to start a new life. CeCe has dyslexia and deep insecurity, believing herself the least accomplished and least attractive of the sisters. Rather than continuing to Australia, she reroutes to Railay Beach in Krabi, Thailand, where she and Star spent happy months the previous year.

On the beach, CeCe notices a solitary man she nicknames "the Werewolf," who appears only at dawn or after dark. After security guards rough her up for sleeping in a cave, the man rescues her and brings her to a hidden private compound. He introduces himself as Ace and is evasive about his past, insisting CeCe never reveal his location. A romantic relationship develops, and Ace orders a biography of Kitty Mercer, reading it aloud to CeCe after she reveals her dyslexia prevents her from reading it herself. The biography introduces a parallel historical narrative.

In Edinburgh in 1906, Kitty McBride is the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Reverend Ralph McBride, a Presbyterian minister. Kitty discovers her father has impregnated a young woman named Annie, shattering her faith in him. Ralph arranges for Kitty to accompany Mrs. Florence McCrombie, a wealthy church patron, on a voyage to Adelaide, Australia, effectively banishing Kitty before she can expose him. In Adelaide, Kitty meets the Mercer family: Stefan, a pearling magnate; his wife Edith; and their identical twin sons, Andrew and Drummond. Andrew is serious and responsible; Drummond is reckless and charming. Both are drawn to Kitty. Drummond kisses her and urges her to wait before accepting Andrew's expected proposal, but Kitty accepts Andrew's offer of stability. On the wedding day, Edith reveals that Ralph once seduced and nearly ruined her, explaining Edith's hostility.

When CeCe leaves Thailand for Broome, a security guard at the compound develops photos from her camera, including images of her with Ace. Upon arriving, CeCe learns the photos are on every front page: Ace is actually Anand Changrok, a rogue trader who caused the collapse of Berners Bank and then vanished. CeCe realizes the guard sold the photos, likely in collusion with Jay, a drifting ex-journalist on Railay Beach.

In Broome, CeCe meets Chrissie, a young woman of Aboriginal and Japanese heritage who immediately recognizes CeCe's Indigenous features. Chrissie identifies the older man in CeCe's photograph as Albert Namatjira, the celebrated Aboriginal watercolor painter from Hermannsburg mission near Alice Springs. Chrissie's grandmother, an elder of the Yawuru people native to the Broome region, tells CeCe a story about the Seven Sisters drawn from the Dreamtime, the Aboriginal tradition of creation narratives. The story closely mirrors the Greek myth CeCe was raised with, and the elder declares CeCe has come home.

Through an audiobook of the biography, CeCe learns about Kitty's life in Broome after her 1907 marriage. Kitty is appalled by racial injustice, particularly the forced removal of mixed-race children from Aboriginal mothers by the government Protectorate. She rescues Camira, a pregnant Aboriginal woman of the Yawuru people, and devises a ruse to protect Camira's daughter Alkina, nicknamed Cat, whose features reveal Japanese heritage, from seizure. Camira becomes Kitty's closest companion and delivers Kitty's son, Charlie.

When Andrew leaves on a business trip in 1912, Drummond arrives to watch over Kitty. After Kitty nearly dies of cholera with Drummond nursing her, she acknowledges her love for him, and they begin an affair. The plan to leave Andrew collapses when all three Mercer men board the SS Koombana, which sinks in a cyclone. Weeks later, a man appears at Kitty's door claiming to be Andrew. He eventually reveals himself as Drummond: Andrew had sent him off the ship to collect the Roseate Pearl, a legendary and reputedly cursed pearl, sparing him from the wreck. Drummond impersonates Andrew so they can live together openly, but Kitty, horrified by the deception, orders him to leave. She discovers she is pregnant with his child, loses the baby in a stillbirth, and channels her grief into running the Mercer Pearling Company, becoming Broome's most powerful pearling figure.

Years later, Charlie and Cat, raised together, fall secretly in love. Cat refuses Charlie's proposal, convinced a mixed-race union will destroy him, and disappears into the outback, where she dies after giving birth. Drummond, living anonymously as a drover in the Australian interior, encounters a camel train carrying the motherless newborn. He saves the baby and finds the Roseate Pearl in the basket. Recognizing the infant's eyes as Alkina's, he delivers the child to Hermannsburg mission, where the pastor names him Francis. Drummond tells Camira, who leaves Kitty to raise Francis at the mission.

CeCe travels to Alice Springs and Hermannsburg, where she meets Francis Abraham, her grandfather, who recognizes himself as the boy in her photograph. Francis, himself a renowned dot painter who befriended Namatjira at the mission, reveals the full family history. CeCe's birth mother, Elizabeth, was the only daughter of Francis and his wife Sarah. Elizabeth eloped with an Aboriginal painter, was abandoned while pregnant, gave birth to CeCe, and died of infection seven days later. A well-dressed man, strongly implied to be Pa Salt, adopted the orphaned baby. CeCe's original birth name was Pearl Abraham. Francis also tells CeCe that Charlie died in the 1942 Japanese air raid on Broome, and that Kitty and Drummond reunited by chance in 1949, eventually moving to Florence, Italy, to live together for the rest of their lives.

Under Francis's mentorship, CeCe paints a large canvas combining acrylic dot technique with Dreamtime symbolism, achieving a genuine artistic breakthrough. She decides to move permanently to Australia.

CeCe returns to London to tie up loose ends. She reconnects with Star and visits Ace twice in Wormwood Scrubs prison, where he confirms that Jay sold the photographs and apologizes. With Star's help, CeCe learns that David Rutter, the CEO of Berners Bank, is secretly Ace's biological father. She also shares a farewell evening with Marina, the sisters' beloved guardian at Atlantis, who tells CeCe she is the proudest of her. Meanwhile, Chrissie, who confessed her love for CeCe, flies to Alice Springs to manage an Aboriginal art gallery. CeCe acknowledges deep feelings for Chrissie but remains uncertain about the nature of their relationship.

Star races to Heathrow at dawn for a final embrace before CeCe walks through security toward her new life. A brief epilogue introduces Tiggy (Taygete), the fifth sister, who is shot while protecting a rare white stag on a Scottish estate, setting up the next book in the series.