Samuel Bellamy, Maria Hallett, and the Whdyah Sam Bellamy is a sailor and willing to work, but he'd like a return on his effort that isn't available to the people in his social class. He objects to living with laws he has no voice in making that favor the wealthy, and exact unjust punishments on the poor. To take a stand, he becomes an outlaw. He is a pirate, and the sweet trade of piracy is a capital crime. Mariah Hallett is a talented weaver with an unusual skill for healing animals that her neighbors both fear, and use when convenient. She is at the center of a controversy between two religious men, each determined to save her soul: One believes she is blessed, the other believes she is a witch. When she is accused murder, she is banished to live alone on the high moors overlooking the sea. The Whydah is a slave ship returning to England, her hold filled with the golden profits from trading in human beings. Captured by Sam and his crew, she is refitted as a pirate ship, heavily armed and loaded with plunder. Sam and Mariah are lovers and kindred spirits. He returns to her in the Whydah, and she's waiting for him. But gold doesn't float. Based in part on the little-known life Samuel Bellamy (1689-1717), Master of the Sweet Trade is set against portraits of pirate life on the high seas and the hardscrabble life on Cape Cod in the early 1700s. Elizabeth Moisan pulls together strands of history and legend, and with imagination, spins a tale of patience and trust between lovers; the struggle for liberty; and honor among thieves. _________________________________________________ "Master of the Sweet Trade is, at its heart, a very human drama, honestly and sensitively observed and imagined. We are drawn in as two gifted young people fall in love and suffer loss, yet hold on against all odds as they defy the powers of their society. Despite all the swashbuckling action, Elizabeth Moisan gets as close to the heart of darkness as any writer I have read - and she does so in an openhearted, open-minded, easy-to-read novel. What an amazing canvas she paints."