The Determined

By: Rachel Rueckert

Set during the Golden Age of Pirates, this luminous novel of historical fiction based on the real experiences of the era’s most fascinating pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, upends all stereotypes of female pirates and excavates these two figures out of the male gaze of history in a story of passion, fierce female friendships, and women confronting the impossible.

1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, twenty-three-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 about her life if he sends a doctor to her friend, Mary Read, who’s battling prison fever in isolation.

For Anne and Mary, life at sea offers a freedom that few women ever know. Born to an Irish gentleman and his maid, Anne leaves her beloved County Cork behind when her family emigrates to South Carolina to escape prejudice. Cornered in a crisis, she flees, making a bitter bargain for safe passage to the Bahamas.

Across the Atlantic in England, Mary confronts her own limitations as an illegitimate daughter. Sneaking into a merchant crew, she disguises herself as a cabin boy, working harder than the men to avoid scrutiny. But when war breaks out, sending 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 and a new life aboard the infamous Revenge, the fastest ship in the Caribbean. Yet with an ambitious governor out for blood, every raid brings more risk. And from the high seas to the depths of a Jamaican prison, Anne and Mary must navigate impossible choices, each determined to taste freedom again.

©2026 Rachel Rueckert (P)2026 Dreamscape Media