The determined

Rachel Rueckert

Book - 2026

"1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, 23-year-old Anne Bonny faces the gallows. When writer Captain Charles Johnson enters the garrison, she strikes a deal: she'll tell this opportunistic fool her life story if he sends a doctor to her friend, Mary Read, who is battling prison fever. Prior to their arrest, life at sea had offered Anne and Mary freedom that few women knew. Anne, born into scandal in Ireland, seeks home and elusive safety in South Carolina. Discovering the opposite, she makes a bitter bargain for emergency passage to the Bahamas. Across the Atlantic in England, Mary confronts her own limitations as an illegitimate daughter. She sneaks into a merchant crew, disguised as a cabin boy. But whe...n war sends Mary into the cavalry, she meets a challenge even she might not rival. When their paths collide in Nassau, a notorious "pirate den," Anne and Mary find kinship aboard the Revenge--the fastest ship in the Caribbean. With the governor out for blood, every raid brings more risk. From the high seas to the depths of a Jamaican prison, Anne and Mary must navigate impossible choices, each determined to taste freedom again"--Cover, page 4. more