Contemporary literary fiction is my bread and butter, the genre I generally prefer. But I get tired of and need an escape from what can be over-arching seriousness, trauma plots, and thorny moral, psychological, and family dilemmas. Sometimes, I just want a good story, preferably set a long time ago.
A few years ago, Ariel Lawhon wrote Frozen River, a deservedly popular piece of historical fiction set in colonial Hallowell, Maine. It's a well-written and researched page turner, based on real court cases.
Her newest book, The Pirate Queen, is based on the life of a real 16th-century Irish pirate queen and clan leader, Grace O'Malley. The novel is full of clan intrigue and sea battles, plus British AND Irish schemers and double-crossers. Grace, a doughty, rebellious rule-breaker of a heroine (and, of course, a redhead), leads her loyal troops with courage and determination. She even has a parlay with Queen Elizabeth. The book is a pirate saga, and a fascinating look at Irish culture and history in the tumultuous 1500s when Britain was trying to force the country to bow to Tudor rule. Grace is a feminist hero as well, and an excellent mariner whose pirate forays took her as far south as Spain. As one of her British opponents wrote, she "overstepped the part of womanhood."
Are there caveats? Well, yes. It's too long, but Lawhon is not the first member of the doorstop club, and she won't be the last. There are several different characters with the same name, and that gets confusing, as does the timeline, which zigzags. But you'll be fine if you pay attention.
There are some surely-it-didn't-happen-exactly-this-way moments. My favorite is when Grace's ship is boarded by Algerian corsairs while Grace is in her cabin, a day after giving birth, alone, to her fourth child. In blood-covered clothes, she picks up her dagger (practically a character in itself) and hand-held blunderbuss and whirls out to join the fray. After my children were born, I could barely pick up my eyeglasses—but I'm not a female pirate.
The sex scenes are pretty cringe-worthy—though I haven't read many elsewhere that aren't. The villains are rotten to the core. The heroes are steadfast and true. That's okay. I was looking for a story to take me away, and I got it.
Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.
