Wayward Voyage
The story begins with the child Anne Cormac emigrating from Ireland to Charlestown, South Carolina, in 1704 with her parents. Her father manages to prosper enough to buy land and slaves to work it. Tomboy Anne rides her beloved horse and plays at swords with a neighbor boy, Richard, whom her father pressures her to marry once she grows up. Rejecting the kind of life she would have to lead as a plantation owner’s wife, Anne runs away with sailor James Bonny, and marries him because the captain demands that they wed if she is to join the ship.
They alight in the Bahamas, where Anne discovers she has little in common with James. The death of their small daughter makes their relationship worse. James takes Anne to witness the hanging of captured pirates, and afterwards she meets Calico Jack Rackham in a tavern. Anne wants something more from life than James offers her, so she runs off to be with Jack and his pirate crew, disguised as a man. But once the crew discovers her secret, their fervent prejudice against women on board results in them threatening to throw Anne off the ship and voting to reject Jack as their captain.
Holmes fills in the many gaps in Anne’s known history with logical suppositions of what might have happened. Anne and her co-pirate Mary Read are strong female characters. The tale added to my scanty knowledge of pirate ways. However, the book is too long. Did Holmes fall into the trap of many first-time authors, not wanting to leave out any of the fascinating information they dug up during their research? With that caveat, I recommend it to fans of adventure stories, and to those who like female historical characters who break the mold of their time period.
