Arghh: Being the Vexing Letters from Pirate Anne Bonny to her Secret Sister

By Wendy Wilkinson

In this prequel to book one of the Adele Bonny Adventures trilogy, we meet the famous ancestor of novel-protagonist Adele Bonny. Anne Bonny, one of the most famous female pirates ever to roam the high seas, was notorious for her cruelty and ruthlessness, her romantic escapades, and her wealth and success. Yet who was she really? This prequel reveal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bellekeep Books, LLC
• Release date: Apr 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9780985568573

Wendy Wilkinson

Wendy Wilkinson, New York Times bestselling nonfiction author, presents her debut novel PIRATES PLUNDER: An Adele Bonny Adventure. This first book in a trilogy chronicles the historical adventures of 18th century pirate Anne Bonny and her fictional niece Adele Bonny, thirteen generations later, who team up together to solve modern day Pirates retrieval cases throughout the Caribbean. Wendy is also a well-known writer of celebrity interviews for national magazines.

Book preview

Born out of wedlock in Ireland to William Cormac and his house­maid, Anne Bonny soon moved with her parents to Charleston, South Carolina after her father’s wife divorced him. Never one to follow the mores of polite society, Anne married James Bonny at eighteen and sailed to New Providence. There she left her husband and hooked up with the romantic pirate captain, Calico Jack Rackham; dressed like a man, as women were thought to bring bad luck to pirate ships; and became, arguably, the most famous and notorious female pirate who ever lived. She and Jack sailed the Seas of the Caribbean from 1718 through 1721, during the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Not generally known, Anne had a sister with whom she corre­sponded while pillaging and plundering with Captain Jack. This secret sister, bound by the customs of the Colonial era, lived vicari­ously through Anne’s familial confessions. Perhaps they met again after Jack was executed and Anne moved back to South Carolina. The sister hid Anne’s piratical letters on the grounds of the Charleston family plantation, to avoid creating scandal for the family. Found in the mid-1800s, the original letters were transcribed by a scholarly great, great, great nephew who took it upon himself to correct original spellings and punctuations in accordance with his Victorian rules. Unfortu­nately, the original documents have been lost, and we have only the transcription created by this overzealous editor. We must just be grate­ful that he did not completely bowdlerize the text and soften all the harsh realities of her history. In the centuries following Anne’s pirate career, her sister’s family rose to prominence in the Carolinas and suppressed the documents for many years.

On