When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in the eighteenth- century West Indies they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives. The first is a slave forced to work in a plantation mansion & subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager. The second is a spirited & rebellious English girl sent to the West Indies to marry well & combine the wealth of two respectable families. But fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other & run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free. As pirates they roam the seas fight pitched battles against their foes & become embroiled in many a heart-quickening adventure. Written in brilliant & sparkling first-person narrative this is a wonderful novel in which Celia Rees has brought the past vividly & intimately to life.