When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in the eighteenth- century West Indies, they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives.

The first is a slave, forced to work in a plantation mansion and subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager.

The second is a spirited and rebellious English girl, sent to the West Indies to marry well and combine the wealth of two respectable families.

But fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other and run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free.

As pirates, they roam the seas, fight pitched battles against their foes and become embroiled in many a heart-quickening adventure.

Written in brilliant and sparkling first-person narrative, this is a wonderful novel in which Celia Rees has brought the past vividly and intimately to life.