Katherine Howe, the bestselling author of THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE, invites her readers to the high seas in A TRUE ACCOUNT. This cleverly crafted novel-within-a-novel exposes both the hard-fought equality and brutal bloodshed of pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy.

Hannah Masury is a servant to Mrs. Tomlinson, the owner of Ship Tavern, and is about as ordinary as she is plain. She spends her days vexing her boss for a laugh, cavorting with servants working in other taverns along Boston’s wharf, and dodging advances from drunk, slovenly sailors. But all of that changes when she joins the town to observe the hanging of pirate William Fly, who reads like a non-anachronistic Jack Sparrow --- all charm and wit even as he ropes his own noose around his neck.

"A TRUE ACCOUNT is a treasure for history buffs, lovers of feminist fiction and armchair adventure seekers alike. With an immediately immersive, vividly described setting and two unforgettable women, it reads like an instant classic."

Later that night, Hannah, still reeling from this gruesome death, encounters a young sailor named Billy Chandler, who begs her for food and a place to sleep. The day after tomorrow, he plans to board the Reporter as a cabin boy. She quickly surmises that he was a pirate under William Fly. All of law-abiding Boston will want him dead for piracy, and pirates will want him dead for evading capture. Although she promises to help him, he is swiftly cut down on their walk to the tavern. When he yells for her to take cover, his murderers, who are also pirates, learn her name and curse her with the black mark of death. Unknown, uncared for and unimportant, Hannah is now a marked woman. But she knows of one escape route: the Reporter is down a cabin boy.

The next morning, Hannah dons boys’ clothes and sets out for the Reporter. Far from a worthy ship, it’s a shabby schooner, not even a hundred tons, paint-chipped and worm-eaten. Still, Hannah --- or Billy, we should call her --- has few choices, so she joins the crew as a young pirate. With no experience and no choice but to survive, she quickly learns the ropes, turning to a man named Seneca for guidance and an old hand, Orne, for mentorship and grandfatherly advice. But then a mutiny occurs, and Hannah now adopts a new label: pirate. And not just any pirate, but a pirate under one of the world’s most notoriously cruel and vicious men: Edward Low.

Two hundred years later, Dr. Marian Beresford, a jaded professor at Radcliffe College, looks on with bored, judgmental eyes as her student, Kay Lonergan, breathlessly shares with her a bound manuscript written by one Hannah Masury. In its pages, Hannah tells her own story, beginning with William Fly’s hanging and Billy Chandler’s murder, and ending with every pirate’s dream: a massive treasure. Marian is an expert in her field; her father is a lauded member of the Explorers Club, and she is eager to poke holes in Kay’s excitement. But every time she brings up a potential point against the manuscript’s authenticity, Kay is able to counter it.

On the topic of Hannah realistically passing as a boy, Kay emphasizes her malnourished state and inability to develop properly as a young woman. On inconsistencies in the timeline --- Hannah referring to pirates believed to have died years before her first voyage --- even Marian must admit that the records themselves cannot be trusted. With hesitant backing from her father, Marian tells Kay that they are to begin their own treasure hunt, retracing Hannah’s steps.

There is perhaps no historical figure as interesting as the pirate, and certainly none as alluring, captivating or sexy. If there is one writer who can revisit the history of the Golden Age of Piracy with meticulous research and gorgeous, lyrical prose, it’s Katherine Howe. In A TRUE ACCOUNT, she alternates between Hannah’s story --- “Written by Herself,” as the subtitle reminds you --- and that of Marian, who is limited by her gender just as Hannah was forced into piracy by hers (or at least by a need to hide hers). The connections between the 1700s and 1900s are startling and vivid, but Howe is never heavy-handed with her comparisons about the rights and roles of women. She doesn’t have to be; the text speaks for itself.

But laid against the thrilling --- and horrifyingly violent --- life of pirates on the high seas, the stories of these two women soar, distinguishing themselves as their own kind of outlaw stories, every bit as captivating as those of famous pirates. Interestingly, as Howe demonstrates, the pirate ship was its own kind of liberation. Rigid hierarchies of race, class or gender fall away as a proto-democracy takes form. Captains are voted on, men are praised for their talents instead of their upbringing, and even a woman can find and hide a treasure. It is these observations that make it clear to Marian just how stifling and structured her life is, even with her accomplishments. Her investigation of Hannah turns into a kind of admiration, one that bolsters her when she fights to live up to her father’s high expectations.

Creatively constructed, meticulously researched and convincingly conceived, A TRUE ACCOUNT is a treasure for history buffs, lovers of feminist fiction and armchair adventure seekers alike. With an immediately immersive, vividly described setting, and two unforgettable women, it reads like an instant classic.