THE DETERMINED
A groundbreaking novel of historical fiction based on the real experiences of two of the Golden Age of Pirates’ most infamous women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who dared to subvert the rules and gender roles of their time.
Coming February 2026, Kensington Books
Back Cover
1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, twenty-three-year-old Anne Bonny faces the gallows. When writer Captain Charles Johnson enters the garrison, she strikes a deal: she’ll tell this opportunistic fool her story if he sends a doctor to her friend, Mary Read, who’s battling prison fever.
Prior to their arrest, life at sea had offered Anne and Mary freedom that few women knew. Anne, born into scandal in Ireland, seeks home and elusive safety in South Carolina. Discovering the opposite, she makes a bitter bargain for emergency passage to the Bahamas.
Across the Atlantic in England, Mary confronts her own limitations as an illegitimate daughter. She sneaks into a merchant crew, disguised as a cabin boy. But when war sends Mary into the cavalry, she meets a challenge even she might not rival.
When their paths collide in Nassau, a notorious “pirate den,” Anne and Mary find kinship aboard the Revenge—the fastest ship in the Caribbean. With the governor out for blood, every raid brings more risk. From the high seas to the depths of a Jamaican prison, Anne and Mary must navigate impossible choices, each determined to taste freedom again.
February 2026
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Immersive, thrilling, and steeped in emotional complexity, The Determined is a triumph of historical research and heart, transporting the reader into the lives of the infamous Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Rueckert paints a nuanced portrait of two complicated women in a world that opposes them at every opportunity. Both heartwarming and gut-wrenching in turns, this novel brings a fresh and original perspective on two of history’s most recognized female pirates.”
“Hang on to your tricorn hat! Rachel Rueckert’s homage to real-life pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read is an unforgettable adventure. From the dangerous high seas to the trenches of war, these women forge a remarkable friendship and wield their wits, wiles and weapons against countless enemies — as well as the social norms and mores of their era. A treasure of a book.”
“An exciting, immersive tale about two legendary women, their courage, and the circumstances that bound them together in infamy. It’s no easy task to fictionalize historical figures as widely mythologized as Read and Bonny, but Rueckert does it with aplomb.”
“This story is based on the real lives of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, two female pirates determined to choose their own adventure in a society that seems equally determined to reduce them to a single narrative. Though set in the eighteenth century, this novel feels eerily relevant to the situation we find ourselves in today; while the outfits and weapons may have changed over the last three hundred years, women’s autonomy still hangs in the balance. The Determined is a powerful example of two women who, armed with daggers, grit, ingenuity, and yes, tenderness, refuse to surrender their right to freedom.”
LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader:
Picture a female pirate in your mind’s eye (there is no shortage of content, as media has always been awash with various caricatures). What do you see? What stereotypes get conjured?
Before writing The Determined and studying the real lives of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, I had my own casual notions of female pirates. Brutal, bloodthirsty women. “Floozies” who could hold their liquor but also sling a gun. And, most importantly, they were sexy: tantalizing, busty, and dripping with desire in their skin-tight leather bodices. They were never, heaven forbid, pregnant. There was often only one such “female pirate” per story, a token character, a feature of a pirate ship—like its sails, cannons, and seductive mermaid bowsprit—designed to make the life of the strapping male protagonist more interesting. Why would a plot need more than one of these women?
Whoever you are, wherever this message in a bottle finds you, if I could transport you across the table from me at this bustling café in Berkeley, California, I would love nothing more than to hear your story, the things that have shaped you and captured your imagination like a timeless, intoxicating riptide. For me? That subject has always been pirates. Since I was a young girl, drawing boats on tests when I didn’t know the answers or threading a plastic sword from Disneyland through my belt loops, and still now.
But it was not until I began leaning into the questions, the why behind this lifelong fascination with pirates, that I unearthed something far more poignant than the simplistic tropes I’d long enjoyed, romanticized clichés that eclipsed the bigger story. Researching and writing my first novel, If the Tide Turns, taught me about the spectrum of piracy and about true social radicals, such as Samuel Bellamy—the richest man who sailed during the Golden Age of Pirates, a Robin Hood of the sea who never killed a single person. I learned that pirates had the first form of workers’ compensation, equitable and transparent pay structures, equal votes for establishing ship leadership, and a democratic constitution written over a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence.
The Determined, my second dive into real-life pirates, brought me to Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two of history’s most infamous characters. Infamous for being pirates, yes, but far more so for being (*gasp*) women.
If I cannot summon you across from me at this café, the second-best thing I can do is to tell you that pirates, especially these two women, have never felt more relevant or timely. Excavating Anne Bonny and Mary Read from the sands of time, from beneath centuries of male gaze and mythology, has changed me forever. I hope, in these pages, you will feel why.
Though I didn’t set out to write a story featuring menstruation, the kinds of violence women too often confront, or the grueling experiences of birth in a filthy prison cell, that is what emerged on the page as I researched, studied, and wrote The Determined. Less “female pirate” stock footage, but also no “pirate queens” screaming for the world to notice and revere them. I saw a kind of pirate story I certainly had never heard of before, but also something fiercer and more powerful, something more recognizable, particularly in their unshakable love and loyalty to each other.
Mary Read and Anne Bonny were singularly determined, like many other characters I encountered while writing this book—particularly the women forced to make impossible choices, who could not afford the illusion and posturing of innocence. In the words of historian Rebecca Alexandra Simon, “Anne Bonny and Mary Read are the two most well-known female pirates of the age, but their lives represent the countless number of women who sailed the seas and were lost to history.”
The more we question and add to the record of tales of women like them, including in the realm of imagination, the more the story goes on, with new layers and complexity continuing to unfurl.
Thank you for reading and for the bold, brave life you are likewise building for yourself—determining and declaring what freedom means to you and for your loved ones. It is in that spirit, with an ocean-wide heart, that I share this story with you.
With Gratitude,
Rachel Rueckert