Back Cover Copy:
Captain Boone Wilder leads a cadre of powerful and notorious pirates that rule the West Indies. He’s survived the cutthroat’s life, bearing the scars to prove it. Fearless, he seeks only the freedom of the seas and an enemy he’s hunted with a vengeance for years. When Boone waylays a fat merchant vessel bound for Port Royal, he discovers more than he bargained for in the luscious bounty of Miss Sabine Tanner. But Miss Tanner hides more than tempting curves in her skirts. When Boone finds her sneaking about the Port Royal taverns, meeting with dubious captains, he’s determined to learn what devious game she’s playing.
The daughter of a condemned pirate captain, Sabine Tanner took to the seas to clear her father’s name and locate his legendary treasure. When her ship bound for Port Royal is boarded, she’s captured by the sun-bronzed, muscular Captain Wilder. While the man is dangerously attractive, she knows from experience that Wilder is nothing but a scabrous bilge rat. Circumstances force her to sail with the scoundrel to find her father’s ship, lost on the phantom Devil’s Island. Driven by opposing agendas, will they survive the hidden truths, or does their greatest threat lie with each other?
Background on Devil’s Island:
In Boone Wilder, I realized my vision of a sexy, uncompromising hero. Uncompromising until he meets his match in Sabine Tanner, my heroine, of course. I modeled Boone after Black Sam Bellamy. If you read his story (also check out the National Geographic webpage dedicated to his discovered shipwreck, The Whydah), he’s often called the Pirate Prince. He was the Robin Hood of pirates, uncompromising 🙂 and dedicated to evening out the playing field (the first 99%). What’s interesting about Bellamy and Blackbeard, according to Woodard in the book Republic of Pirates, there’s no record, in nearly 300 attacks on shipping between the two of them, of either Blackbeard or Bellamy killing a captive. (They may have roughed them up a bit.)
In Republic of Pirates, Woodard includes a short speech made by Bellamy from the writings of a Captain Beer, captured then released by Bellamy. The following are the wonderful pirate words of Bellamy from the Republic of Pirates:
“Damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery.”
But the fascinating story of Bellamy doesn’t end there. The legend goes, he loved a young woman, Maria Hallett, who he left behind in Maine to seek fortune and fame. He was on his way back to her, loaded with treasure, when they hit a terrible storm and wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod. Three of the crew survived only to be taken prisoner and tried for piracy. The Whydah Pirate Museum in Massachusetts contains a wonderful exhibit which I had the fortune of seeing when it traveled to the Arizona Science Museum.