About

Rachel Rueckert has been pirate-obsessed since she was a young girl. She wore a plastic sword through her belt loops, drew ships on tests when she didn’t know the answers, and dressed as a pirate every year for Halloween—including in her high school senior picture. She is now an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher who holds an MFA from Columbia University and an M.Ed from Boston University. She is fascinated by unconventional journeys and enjoys excavating real-life people—such as Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Sam Bellamy—from the sands of history.

If the Tide Turns is a true forbidden love story set 300 years ago in Cape Cod and the Caribbean (think The Scarlet Letter meets the Golden Age of Pirates). Her next novel, The Determined—based on the true lives of history’s most notorious female pirates—comes out in 2026 through Kensington Books.

Rachel is also the author of East Winds, a memoir showing her external and internal journeys to wrestle with what marriage means while backpacking through South America, Asia, and Europe as a millennial newlywed—unsure if she believes in marriage, let alone the lofty Mormon ideal of eternal marriage.

Rachel takes pleasure in unconventional journeys. She specializes in creative nonfiction, historical fiction, ghostwriting, and curriculum design. In addition, she co-founded KLEIO, a family story writing service. After a decade in Boston, she is currently based in the Bay Area.

Pronouns: she/her/hers
Last Name Pronunciation: Roo-curt (rhymes with two)
Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon at InkWell Management.