How much do we know about the real Mary Read?
We have the transcript of her crew’s 1720 trial, and she’s named in a proclamation from Nassau’s governor Woodes Rogers. Beyond that we’re in the hands of the (pseudonymous) Captain Charles Johnson, whose A General History of the Pyrates is a gloriously entertaining but fanciful account. All these gaps in the record might be a nightmare for a historian, but they’re a gift to a novelist.
What drew you to Mary’s story?