The Pirate's Daughter [Hardcover]

Robert Girardi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1996

It began with a chance meeting and led to a date at a small French restaurant in a city by the sea.  She ordered expensive wine.  He paid the bill.  She spoke of the sea.  He was haunted by her green eyes and copper-colored skin.  Then, in a matter of weeks, the woman named Cricket Page would lead Wilson Lander away from the moorings of his familiar life, away from his relationship with a successful businesswoman and onto a tycoon's yacht called the Compound Interest--for a journey across the great Sargasso Sea.

Coming ashore in a world of searing mystery and danger, Lander will pay the price for his unquenchable desire for Cricket Page, for their moments of stolen pleasure and her cryptic promises of a life of luxury together.  For she is a pirate's daughter, and in an exotic land exploding with cruelty and violence, populated by maniacs and plunderers, Wilson Lander must escape the woman who has stolen his heart--and given him his freedom. . . .


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A contemporary tale of piracy, slavery and other acts of skulduggery, Girardi's second novel again straddles the line between the real and the wildly improbable, as was the case in the well-received Madeleine's Ghost. It's a sinister and lusty romantic adventure propelled by a fluid narrative style laced with disturbing undertones. Wilson Lander, whose tragic childhood (both his parents died before he was 10) left him with a permanent sense of dread, meets Susan "Cricket" Page, a sexy woman working in an occult store only until she ships out to sea as a crew member on a private yacht. Feeling trapped and unhappy, Lander, an executive assistant to his girlfriend, Andrea, a v-p at a small brokerage firm in an unnamed coastal city, is vulnerable to Cricket's seductive allure. Around the same time, in a farfetched plot element so smoothly integrated into the story it feels completely natural, Lander falls in with some young African men, survivors of the tribal warfare ravaging their home, the fictional country of Bupanda. Lander ends up going to sea with the mysterious and untrustworthy Cricket. But loving Cricket means entering a world of modern-day pirates armed with both guns and laptops, who live on an island off the coast of barbaric Bupanda, where slavery thrives. Reunited with his Bupandan friends, Lander is forced to choose between Cricket and his own humanity. After a near mythic journey of over two years, Lander comes back to civilization and settles down-but Cricket has a surprise in store for him yet. Intensely atmospheric, occasionally cynical yet somehow timeless in its sensual tone, the book is a clever and intriguing balancing act, a fantasy with enough real-world roots to make it all seem as horribly plausible as it is wonderfully entertaining. Audio rights to Audio Renaissance; Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Following up his first novel, Madeleine's Ghost (LJ 4/15/95), whicwas greeted witrave reviews, Girardi spins a tale about a man who finds love and danger in civil war-torn Africa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038531485X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385314855
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,060,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT GIRARDI is the author of five nov­els and one volume of novellas. His short fic­tion has been pub­lished in Tri-Quarterly and Vir­ginia Lit­er­ary Review, and his non-fiction has appeared in The New Repub­lic, Washingtonian Magazine, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and The Wash­ing­ton Post. His novels have been translated into nine languages--including Hebrew and Estonian. He lives in Wash­ing­ton, DC with his three children. He sells tickets at a movie theater in Bethesda, Maryland, and works as sexton of Our Lady of Victory Church in Washington, DC. (Visit him on the web at girardilit.com : email at [e-mail].)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extremely creative tale., September 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

The twists in the plot are so important that you should not read detailed reviews (like the Kirkus one on this web page)before reading The Pirate's Daughter. This book is full of surprising twists and turns. Very unpredictable. Unconventional. An incredibly creative work. I can't think of another book like it. Full of adventure, adventure moreover that puts you in moral dilemmas--very provoking and definitely not "escapism" or mere entertainment. It is seemingly an improbable tale--who believes in pirates these days?--but I actually recall news reports of piracy in the south seas even today. This may be a "guy" book--a male's fantasy of being conned/abducted by an irresistably sensual woman into a world-class adventure. On the other hand, maybe this could be a female fantasy too? I like the way characters in an episode in the beginning, in New York, tie in with events in Afria in the end of the book. Nothing is disconnected. The book is tight. The only thing about the book that made me uneasy was its characterization of West Africa which, having travelled there myself, seemed stereotypically negative and uninformed. There are many Africas, and this is definitely one of them (the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone come to mind), but it's not the one I like to think about.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good escape from the rat race!!, January 17, 2006

By 

Eric F. Schmaltz "ericfs" (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

Don't listen to the bad reviews about this book ( good grief folks..it's just a story!!). The bad reviewers here don't give the writer enough credit..This book will hold you captive from the first page! Who cares if all the info. isn't correct (again..it's just a story folks!!) If you want a book that has adventure, mystery, romance and suspense you will like it..It was a violent in some places but I held out just because I had to find out what happened next! I gave it 4 stars because of the violence but it's worth checking out!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I hated this book . . . but I loved it at the same time, February 28, 2006

By 

Lucy Etana Shulman (Brooklyn, NY/Portland, ME) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

Maybe due to simple youth and inexperience, this book made me horribly sad. I cried for about an hour at the end. I felt especially bad for Cricket. She was a bad person, but it was the only life she had ever known, and she wanted to escape from it, but needed to wait so she could escape without looking back. I felt sad for Wilson too. I mean, he was the good guy and he did what he thought was right and it was right, obviously, but to just forget? It seems so sad.
Anyway, the writing style was pretty good, easy to follow, unlike some older classics that can't say anything straight out, and with a really clever blend of reality and fiction. The characters were believable, and though it was a really sad, brutal story, I got snapped at three times in one class today for surreptitiously picking up this book to read.