Rachel Rueckert: The Determined
Award-winning author Rachel Rueckert discusses her historical novel following notorious women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read in the Golden Age of Piracy.
Why we picked this
A historical novel that takes two of piracy's most mythologized women and gives them interior lives — the kind of revisionist storytelling that makes familiar history feel genuinely new.
Rachel Rueckert brings the Golden Age of Piracy to life through the intertwined stories of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two women who refused the roles their era assigned them. Her historical novel traces their individual struggles in Ireland and England through their encounters at sea and imprisonment in Jamaica.
Rueckert is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher whose work blends meticulous historical research with vivid storytelling. This evening at Tattered Cover offers a chance to hear her discuss the craft of reimagining real historical figures and the particular challenge of writing women whose lives were recorded almost entirely by the men who judged them.