The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O'Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea

The Pirate Queen contains numerous well-researched stories of the many historical and present-day women whose home is the sea. This is not just a book about Grace O'Malley, though she is amply covered in four chapters, but rather it brings to life the many well and lesser known women whose voices and stories have long been forgotten. Sjoholm obviously took great care to convey the histories in an accurate and interesting way and the depth of her research is admirable. But she wasn't simply writing a history book; this is about her journey too and that's what gives The Pirate Queen its accessibility and warmth. As I read Sjoholm's book, I felt like I traveled and went to many places that I will never see, and also learned about women I never knew existed. The repeated theme of women being forgotten, or their roles diminished, by history books and even contemporary scholars, is a tragedy too often seen in so many professions. I, for one, am glad that Barbara Sjoholm took the time to get these stories on the page.

I think this is a wonderful book. It is beautifully written, thoroughly researched, well-organized, and very inspiring. I found it to be extraordinary on many levels. Ms. Sjoholm honored her interest in seafaring women by conducting the research, planning her trip, taking her trip, and, in essence, following her dream. To me, her journey itself was as inspiring as the wonderful and courageous women about whom she wrote. This book, in addition to educating me about historical women in the North Atlantic, also showed me what it looks like when a woman--in this case the author herself--pursues a dream.

The Pirate Queen is truly a search, combing the depths and breadth of the North Atlantic, for women's stories all too easily washed away by time and inattention. Sjoholm focuses our attention on characters both real and legendary, on time both past and present, and on the nature of journeys, both historic and personal. The author is a masterful weaver of the stories she hears and researches including her own. The book satisfies by delivering new and hard-won information about obscure lives and times as well as introducing some quirky present-day folk that make up part of the search she lets us in on. I love learning new things and new ways of seeing, and especially learning how other people, like this author, actually find out what they tell us to be true.

Sjoholm takes us on a journey out to the furthest reaches, geographically and historically, of women's seafaring. Repeatedly met by locals' adamant protests that 'the women never went to sea', Sjoholm employs both humor and wit as she unravels buried or overlooked evidence that women not only went to sea, but they forged identities and livelihoods there, leaving behind heroic legends that have been long absent from accessible recorded history. What I liked most about this book was the way Sjoholm's journey out was, inevitably, also a journey inward. Her pursuit of forgotten women fathomed submerged aspects of her own identity. In the true essence of travel essay, she reminds us there is a profoundly transformative relationship between the stories, places, and people which travelers (and researchers) discover and the stories of ourselves. Having traveled some of this route myself, I appreciated Sjoholm's keen eye for the vibrant eccentricities of remote coastal communities and was wistfully reminded of how my own travels shaped my life. The book awakened the traveler in me and I was left hungry for pilgrimage and the reckoning of self that awaits us on stark, outer shores.