A True Account

September 4, 2023
Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane) brings the world of 18th-century pirates to life in this bracing outing. In 1726 Boston, 17-year-old Hannah Masury flees indentured servitude with Billy Chandler, a boy who’s hiding from the privateers he betrayed to the law to save himself. After Billy’s caught and killed, Hannah assumes his identity and boards another pirate ship, where ruthless Ned Low takes command in a grisly mutiny that sees him cut off the previous captain’s lips and feed them to a dog. Unnerved by Ned’s brutality, Hannah pretends to be his “unquestioning shipmate” until she has a chance to flee. In a parallel narrative set in the 1920s, Radcliffe College student Kay Lonergan discovers Hannah’s journal in a basement on campus; in it, Hannah hints at the location of a buried treasure in the Carribean region. Kay’s professor Marian Beresford has her doubts about the journal’s authenticity, but after Marian mentions it to her father, John, a famous explorer, he offers to fund an expedition to search for the treasure. As the Beresfords travel with Kay to the Florida Keys and Kay’s excitement draws interest from the press, Marian worries she’ll be the one discredited if the journal turns out to be a fake. Hannah’s adventures are riveting, and Howe manages to connect the parallel stories by highlighting how her women protagonists navigate the whims of powerful men. Historical fiction fans will love this. (Nov.)This review has been updated with further information.

Starred review from September 1, 2023

In 1726, Hannah Maury, an orphan working at a seafront Massachusetts tavern, witnesses the hanging of a pirate. Chastened by the stark reality of justice served, she encounters a young cabin boy hidden in the barn behind her house. The boy has been branded a traitor by the pirate crew and has received a "black spot" marking him for death. Hannah attempts to help him but gets drawn into danger after the pirates murder him and then threaten her. She steals the boy's boots, identity, and position on a ship set to sail. Fast-forward to 1930. Professor Marian Beresford's student has presented her with a manuscript written by Hannah, describing her voyage on the ship that turned pirate. The tale details the terror of sailing with men who have no moral compass and Hannah's constant fear of being exposed as a woman. Marian, determined to follow the clues detailed by Hannah, finds herself perilously close to losing her credibility and having her own secrets brought to light. VERDICT Howe (The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs) has created a suspenseful, swashbuckling adventure filled with fiendish characters and historic detail.--Susan Santa

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2023
Issues of identity loom large in this tale of a female pirate whose journal becomes the research subject of a professor and her ambitious student. Hannah Masury's "Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates" tells a classic story: In 1726, the illiterate teenager witnesses the murder of a young sailor by pirates and knows she must flee Boston. Disguising herself as a boy named Will, she becomes cabin boy on a ship, only to find herself in the company of marauding pirates on their way to a tropical island where treasure is buried; to survive, she becomes a pirate, too. The journal's existence proves that Hannah did survive, but is it, along with the treasure it describes, real? That's the question Radcliffe Professor Marian Beresford tries to resolve two centuries later. Against her better judgment, and despite factual errors in Hannah's version of history, Marian wants to believe that the journal her student Kay Lonergan has discovered is authentic. Marian finds backing for an expedition to search a crescent of islands Hannah mentions, but nothing works out as planned. Sometimes deadly earnest, sometimes sharply funny, the novel explores how women thwarted by circumstances shape-shift to fit in. Hannah, a starving girl in 18th-century Boston, finds some measure of security as a boy pirate, while Marian, a closeted 20th-century gay woman, lives with strict propriety as a spinster in Boston and occasionally escapes to the Mad Hatter, an actual gay club in 1930s New York. And obfuscating gender or sexuality is not the only tool of self-protection or -advancement the novel shows; Kay, described by Marian as "the heroine of her own imagination," courts fame in the tabloid press with a canny mix of fact and exaggeration. In Howe's deliberately ambiguous narrative, authenticity is difficult to prove and not a clear absolute, in people or objects. Enjoy the author's strong eye for details of time and place; skim the muddled pirate action on the high seas.

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November 1, 2023
In 1720s Boston, young and determined tavern maid Hannah Masury's life changes when she witnesses the execution of William Fly for piracy. A series of coincidences leads to her disguising herself as a cabin boy aboard a moth-eaten ship. No sooner has it left harbor than Ned Lowe murders its captain and leads a mutinous band of his fellow sailors a-pirating. Meanwhile, in early 1930s academia, a student presents a professor, Marion Beresford, with a rediscovered volume containing Hannah's tale, allegedly a true account that leads to pirate treasure. Howe (The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, 2019) focuses on Hannah's adventures, with shifts to the 1930s story line in periodic interruptions that prolong the dramatic tension and bookend Hannah's life. There are real historical people--Masury herself, William Fly, Cotton Mather, the notorious Edward ""Ned"" Lowe--and nods to Treasure Island (a Jim Hawkins-like, one-legged ship's cook Hannah calls John Somethingorother, a Jim Hawkins who fares far worse than the original). Best-selling Howe's historically anchored, female-centered pirate adventure doesn't shy away from that world's less-than glamorous cruelty and gore, while its intrepid women protagonists will delight readers

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