The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is an unusual novel because it’s based on the ‘true story’ of someone who may or may not have actually existed! One of a very small number of 17th century female pirates, Jacquotte Delahaye is not mentioned in any contemporary sources and appears in writing, possibly for the first time, in the 1940s in stories by Léon Treich, a French fiction writer. However, she has become part of pirate folklore and although her existence hasn’t been proved, it hasn’t been disproved either. In this new novel, Briony Cameron has taken the few ‘facts’ about Jacquotte that have found their way into the legends – such as her place of birth and the colour of her hair (red, leading to the nickname Back from the Dead Red) – and imagined a story around them.

At the beginning of the book, twenty-year-old Jacquotte is living in the town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, in 1655. As the daughter of a Frenchman exiled to the Caribbean for treason, all Jacquotte knows about her mother is that she was a free black woman who died after giving birth to her younger brother. When her father is implicated in another treasonous plot, Jacquotte’s world falls apart and she is forced to flee the island. Her life of piracy begins when she is captured by the brutal Captain Blackhand and finds herself an indentured servant aboard his ship, but eventually Jacquotte will become a pirate captain in her own right, with her own ship and crew to command.

There’s also a romantic element to the novel, with Jacquotte falling in love with Teresa, wife of the Governor of Yáquimo, but this was one of my least favourite aspects of the book. They seemed to rush into things very quickly, with no time for the reader to see their feelings for each other developing and I felt that the relationship lacked emotional depth. In fact, apart from Jacquotte herself, I thought all of the characters in the book lacked depth – the good characters were very good and the bad ones were very bad, with little in between. I would describe this as much more of a plot-driven book. Although it takes a while to get started, once Jacquotte is at sea there’s lots of action, with sea battles, fight scenes and all the swashbuckling adventure you would expect from a pirate novel.

Sadly, despite the fascinating protagonist, I wasn’t very impressed with this book. I did enjoy the first section, which describes Jacquotte’s life in Yáquimo and the events that lead to her becoming a pirate, but as I read on I felt I was reading the author’s fantasy of how she would have liked 17th century society to have been, rather than how it actually was. I don’t think many people in the 1650s had such progressive ideas on race, gender and sexuality, however nice it is to imagine that they did! If you’re not too bothered about historical accuracy and just want to read an entertaining story, then you’ll probably enjoy The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye, but it wasn’t really for me. On a more positive note, I liked the descriptions of the various ports Jacquotte and her crew visit as they sail around Hispaniola, Jamaica and Tortuga, which is the closest I’ll get to visiting the Caribbean this summer!

Thanks to Piatkus for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 20/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

This is book 2/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.