The Sweet Trade [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Garrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2001

Anne Bonny, a pampered Southern belle, hungers for a life more exciting and dangerous than she knows keeping her father's household together. When she convinces a hapless sailor boy to marry her and take her to Nassau, that seething cauldron of piracy, prostitution and all things wicked, she alters the course of her life forever. . .

Calico Jack Rackham, a devious pirate, returns to Nassau with hopes of accepting the governor's pardon and leaving the sweet trade. When he first lays eyes on Anne Bonny, however, he realizes that she is the one woman who could convince him to put aside his fear of the noose and take up the trade again, no matter what the consequences.

And Mary Read, a sensible Englishwoman who has been living as a man and earning her livelihood as a merchant sailor, must make a decision when her ship is overtaken by Calico Jack and she is invited to join the band of thieves. When she tastes the freedom of a pirate's life, she realizes what she has been missing during all her years of toil... and when she joins forces with Anne, they form a union that will carry them to the ends of the earth, through births, deaths, and battles more exciting than even Anne Bonny could have dreamed.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Writing a novel based on the lives of real people... is a tricky thing," muses first novelist Garrett in an afterword. "The end result is, invariably, an odd amalgam of history and fiction, not entirely one or the other." Striving for historical accuracy, Garrett crafts a fast-moving, if ultimately conventional, romantic adventure novel. Mary Read and Anne Bonny, a pair of unusual (real-life) 18th-century pirates, dress as men so they may travel freely, and, together with Calico Jack Rackam, they terrorize the West Indies. Court records provide some of the information for Garrett's reconstruction of her heroines' lives. Mary Read was dressed as a boy by her mother to dupe her in-laws; later, it seems natural for Mary to join England's cavalry in the war against the French. Falling in love with her tent-mate Frederick Heesch, Mary saves his life numerous times and eventually reveals her true identity. When their brief marriage is terminated by his death of consumption, Mary sees no alternative but to assume her previous guise and sign on as a sailor with a Dutch ship. In the West Indies the ship is besieged by the notorious Calico Jack and his lover, Anne, who has only recently thumbed her nose at her spineless husband and run off with Jack, stealing a ship from the governor in Nassau. Sailing the Caribbean in search of heavily laden merchant ships, Calico Jack's crew happily accepts Mary and Anne into their makeshift family, marveling to see the women fight, cuss and pirate with lusty enthusiasm. As each woman struggles with her double identity, the narrative becomes an absorbing blend of action, historical event and emotional drama.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Pirate legends have been around as long as pirates themselves, but Garrett's tale is a new version of an old pirate story. She tells of the exciting adventures of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, female pirates who become dear friends amid their harsh and highly illegal lifestyle. Each woman came from a very different background; free-spirited Anne was the only daughter of a successful American businessman, and practical Mary spent most of her life in Europe cross-dressing in order to survive. Another pirate, Calico Jack Rackham, plays an important role in the story of these two women. Calico Jack is about to give up his life of piracy but falls in love with Anne and therefore loses all prospects of a legitimate career. Garrett vividly re-creates the eighteenth-century outlaw world of Nassau and the high seas. This is a colorful, true-life novel about fighting, love, death, and, above all else, friendship. Julia Glynn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Forge; 1st edition (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312875185
• ISBN-13: 978-0312875183
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,478,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in a log cabin in the sea-side town of Lewiston, Maine.... Okay, maybe not a log cabin. And maybe Lewiston isn't exactly a seaside town. Despite that, my interest in ships and the sea began early, reading Hornblower and building ship models. In high school I built a fifteen foot sailboat, and with a friend, an eighteen foot canoe.
I graduated from Lewiston High School in 1980, if not with honors then at least with a diploma. After a year of hitchhiking and motorcycling around the country, I attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, later transferring to UCLA Film School (Official Motto: '...but what I really want to do is direct...') , from which I graduated in 1986. After working in the television industry for two years, I realized that I could not stand a) the television industry, b) Los Angeles and c) being ashore. In 1988 I joined the crew of the Golden Hinde (rhymes with mind), a replica of Sir Francis Drake's vessel of 1577. There I met a foretop person named Lisa Page, whom I beat out for the job of bosun. Lisa vowed then and there to marry me and make me pay for that for the rest of my life.
Leaving the Hinde in Houston, Texas, I worked aboard the brig Lady Washington (after my time she played the Interceptor in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and the ship 'HMS' Rose, (Surprise in Master and Commander, also after my time) I sailed aboard Rose for two years, as Able Bodied Seaman and Third Mate.
In 1993, I 'swallowed the anchor.' Lisa Page, made good on her threat and we married that year. The following year I finished By Force of Arms, my first book. I've been a full-time writer since then, with fourteen books either published or in the process of being published. My books have sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain. My 2003 title Glory in the Name was selected as the winner of the American Library Association's W.Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction.
Recently, my writing has expanded to include non-fiction. My first work of non-fiction was Reign of Iron, a detailed look at the ironclads Monitor and Merrimack (Virginia). More recently I completed a book about the Revolutionary war naval battle that took place on Lake Champlain. That book is called Benedict Arnold's Navy.
Lisa and I now live in Harpswell, Maine (which really is a seaside town), with our four children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet irony, September 7, 2006

By 

deepbluesky (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sweet Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

How's this for a twist? This heavily gender-coded bodice-ripper about women who lived their lives as men was written by a male author writing under a female pseudonym.

James L. Nelson (aka Elizabeth Garrett) repackaged and rereleased this book in 2004 as "The Only Life That Mattered: The Short and Merry Lives of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack", under his real name.

This makes Paul McGrath's hilariously sexist review, well, all the more hilarious really: "The fundamental problem here is that this is a pirate story written by a woman and about female pirates. It is, to its core, written from a feminine perspective."

Whenever will people learn not to judge a book by its cover?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yaarr, and yo ho, August 22, 2006

By 

Tom Knapp "Rambles.NET editor" (Lancaster, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Sweet Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

One of the more romanticized villains in history is the noble pirate, the seafaring reaver with gleam in his eye and a heart of gold. Nowhere is this more evident than in tales of the sea queens, the rare but all too real women in pirate's clothing. The most famous of these are Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who sailed with Calico Jack Rackam in the Caribbean in the early 1700s.

Based on what historical records exist detailing their lives, Elizabeth Garrett in "The Sweet Trade" weaves a credible tale of their adventures. The story is exciting and necessarily quick-paced -- their days of piracy together lasted less than three years -- but it's leisurely enough to sit back and enjoy the progression of events. You'll get to know the three main characters quite well, both their strengths and failings, and you'll get a good feel for life at sea at the dawn of the 18th century. You'll certainly learn enough to realize that life at sea wasn't easy, and pirates certainly weren't romantic or noble.

Garrett has a fine voice for narration, and a keen sense of story. This one unfolds with a few surprises along the way, and leaves you with a conviction that the author knew her subjects in and out before starting to write. She might show occasional aspirations to be a romance writer, but those out-of-place scenes are thankfully few and far between. Similarly, the main characters are all a bit too good looking, and the sex is always just a bit too good; I suspect in real life these people stank most of the time and had little time to learn the gentler arts of wooing.

I picked up "The Sweet Trade" because it's a pirate book, and because it features two piratesses who've intrigued me for years. While there are some weaknesses, I read the book eagerly and walked away pleased, quite sated by the experience. I'd certainly consider reading more by this author in the future.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.NET editor

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read this year, August 18, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Sweet Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

Just got finished reading The Sweet Trade. Was a little apprehensive about reading the book since I was never interested in pirates, but what a book. You heard Mary's story, Anne's and Black Jack's all at once. I'd highly recommend it. It's full of action, fun, love, humer, adventure, romance and shows that you must follow your heart. It also shows that even though we desire certain things we don't always get them and sometimes have to make the best of what we have and that women' lib is not a new idea.