I’ve meant to read Jan Yolen since I was a kid.  I owned at least one of her books for decades, but somehow this is the first one I’ve actually read.  And I found the darned thing in a Little Free Library.  It’s the first time I’ve actually taken a book from one instead of leaving a book.  With this book, Yolen explores the stories of several women who, for whatever reason, took up careers in piracy on the high seas.  Each story is fascinating.  Some are admittedly suspect.  Others as well documented as anything else from their time.  

Having read Suzanne J. Stark’s excellent book Female Tars several years ago, it gave me some perspective on just how wrong our typical image of sailing ships before the age of the ironclads really is.  Like so much that we look at today as always having been thus, much of our concept of History and especially women’s place in it, seems largely invented in the 1800s.  Consciously or (and) unconsciously, for the last two hundred years, women have been written out, obscured, and ignored.  So, it’s nice to have a book like this, and like Female Tars, that remind us of the truth.  The truth being A) the past was awful, and B) the past is so much weirder than we imagine.  

From a tabletop roleplaying perspective, this book features several people who would serve as fantastic inspiration for characters or stories.  Some highlights include Queen Teuta, who supposedly caused Rome some trouble around 230 BCE; Jeanne de Belleville who got ticked with the French, sold her lands to buy ships which she used to aid the British; Grania O’Malley, who definitely deserves the title of “pirate queen;” and Madame Ching, the pirate queen of China, equally as deserving of the title.  There’s also the extremely metal story of Pretty Peg and Henrik Van Dank.  I’m not saying I want a movie about them, but I definitely want a couple of supporting characters to go out like that.  Dang.  Hardcore.

The stories are accompanied by some excellent art by Christine Joy Pratt.  I believe it’s done on scratchboard, giving the look of old timey woodcuts.  It’s all very moody and evocative. 

This is an excellent springboard for a young reader to learn more about places, times, and people.  These individuals aren’t going to show up in most school books.  But their stories might tie into other things that do, and that helps to round out the understanding of times and places.  The stories are well presented and fast to read.  Good stuff.

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