In the golden age of piracy, twelve-year-old Master William, of the rocky islands of the Okneys, leaves his dead mother, thought to be a Selkie, to sail the sea lanes of the world and evade conscription in the British Navy. He is followed by a Finman, a mythical sorcerer of the sea, who proctors him by blowing him through time and space, if need be, for a secret end. Young William must travel to the age of the most notorious female pirate of history, the older Anne Bonny, to achieve his destiny among such rogues as Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, and Calico Jack Rackham. Like the author's internationally acclaimed Hymn to the Chesapeake, Master William displays the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the sea combined with his stunning gift for lyrical language.