Pirates! - Softcover

Celia Rees

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408800276 ISBN 13: 9781408800270

Publisher: Bloomsbury Childrens Books, 2009

Synopsis

When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in the eighteenth- century West Indies, they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives. The first is a slave, forced to work in a plantation mansion and subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager. The second is a spirited and rebellious English girl, sent to the West Indies to marry well and combine the wealth of two respectable families. But fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other and run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free. As pirates, they roam the seas, fight pitched battles against their foes and become embroiled in many a heart-quickening adventure. Written in brilliant and sparkling first-person narrative, this is a wonderful novel in which Celia Rees has brought the past vividly and intimately to life.

About this title

Review

Nancy Kington, a wealthy merchant’s daughter living in Bristol, England in the early 1700’s, is sometimes lonely but enjoys the privileges her father’s business brings. Minerva Sharpe is a penniless slave’s daughter living and working on the Kington’s Jamaican plantation. These two young women, united through a set of extraordinary circumstances including a brutal murder, an arranged marriage, and set of ruby earrings, find themselves sailing the high seas in search of love, adventure and freedom—as pirates!

Celebrated British author Celia Rees (Witch Child, Sorceress) has penned a treasure chest of a tale that will keep teens glued to the pages until the last villain sinks to a deserved watery grave and the last beautiful heroine is reunited with her lost love. Frustrated land-lubbers will want to follow up this four-star read with L.A. Meyer’s Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship’s Boy or Sara Lorimer‘s Booty, a collection of all-true tales of swashbuckling women.--Jennifer Hubert

From the Inside Flap

It is the dawn of the eighteenth century, when girls stay home and sew while men sail the high seas finding adventure, danger, and gold. But two unusually adventurous girls--a rich merchant's daughter, Nancy Kington, and her former plantation slave, Minerva Sharpe--take to the high seas from Jamaica on a shop the crew renames Deliverance. Not just any trading ship, the Deliverance flies black flags from its mast, proclaiming to all that the newly named, hijacked ship is a pirate vessel, striking fear into the hearts of those she approaches. Or so they hope.

For Nancy, the Deliverance is her escape from an arranged betrothal to a controlling and devilish man. For Minerva, it is an escape from slavery, as well as from the fearsome overseer on Nancy's family plantation. But in the end, the money, the adventure, the companionship, and the chance to see the world not as women, but as bold and daring pirates, is an opportunity neither can deny.

A powerful, thrilling, and ultimately inspiring journey of two women who break the bonds of gender, race, and position to find their own way to glory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Childrens Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408800276
• ISBN 13: 9781408800270
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400