Sarah Bishop: Blood in the Rigging is a stunning, historically accurate novel chronicling the harrowing transformation of a well-bred Long Island girl into a reluctant pirate, fugitive, and legendary hermitess of the American wilds.
Born in 1759 to wealth and education, Sarah Bishop's world unravels when her Loyalist family estate is torched by British privateers. Captured and hauled aboard a pirate vessel, she endures unimaginable trauma, a coerced marriage to the ship's ruthless captain, and the brutal death that makes her both free and alone. In the midst of cannon fire and crashing waves, Sarah survives not through violence-but silence, cunning, and the iron will to vanish.
Escaping by night and barefoot through the forests of Connecticut, Sarah eventually finds refuge in a cave above Ridgefield, where she lives in isolation for over three decades. But even in her chosen solitude, she is never truly alone. Haunted by memory, watched by a curious town, and whispered about in pews and storms, Sarah becomes both a ghost and a guardian on the mountain.
Based on primary source accounts and centuries-old local legend, this novel paints Sarah not as a myth, but as a woman-wounded, wary, devout, and determined. Blood in the Rigging honors her pain without romanticizing it, and gives voice to the quiet strength that endured long after the cannon smoke cleared.
Includes a historical timeline and resource notes in the back to separate truth from folklore.
"Quiet women make the loudest legends. Torgrim gives her voice the volume it's deserved all along." -Penny Nicholson, Historian
Sale
