In sixteenth-century Ireland, the sea belongs to men. Nuala Ní Fhaoláin has never believed it.
Born to a powerful Gaelic clan and gifted with an uncanny knowledge of tides, channels, and hidden anchorages, Nuala can read the western coast better than any captain alive. Yet because she is a woman, her father will not let her inherit the authority she has already proved she can wield.
Sent away to be fostered and prepared for marriage, Nuala meets Dáire Ó Dubhda, a proud hostage from a rival clan with every reason to hate her name. His family carries the scars of her father’s violence. She carries ambitions no husband, chieftain, or English official intends to tolerate. What begins in hostility becomes a dangerous bond neither of them can afford.
Marriage takes Nuala to another stronghold, but widowhood, betrayal, and the encroaching power of the English Crown strip away the protections she was promised. Refusing to surrender, she builds power where the law cannot easily reach: on the water. With loyal crews, secret coastal knowledge, and a will hardened by loss, she becomes the woman merchants fear, clans follow, and governors call a pirate.
But when the Crown seizes the people she loves and demands submission, Nuala must choose what she is willing to sacrifice for freedom. Her fight will carry her from blood-soaked Irish shores to the court of Elizabeth I, where one woman who rules must face another who refuses to kneel.
THE PIRATE QUEEN is a sweeping historical novel of forbidden love, clan loyalty, rebellion, betrayal, and a woman’s battle to command her own life in a country being remade by conquest.