Sarah Kidd was a young, well-to-do woman. Her first was arranged by her father. Her second was one of convenience. At twenty-one, her third marriage is one of love when she accepts the hand of Captain Kidd. When her husband is accused of piracy, she stands by him and does everything she can to aid him.

I don’t think I’m alone in my fascination with pirates. I suppose it’s because there is not much known about them since almost 300 years have passed since “the Golden Age of Piracy”. Learning more about the wife of one of the famous pirates caught my attention.

It was interesting to see the information that has survived all this time about Sarah Kidd. The businesses she ran, who she married, and how she tried to help her pirate husband. There is a lot that can be inferred from these papers. But inferences are not facts. There are gaps where the author could only speculate on the matter and I did not always agree with those speculations.

Still, it was an interesting read and I feel like I learned a lot about the time period. Those with an interest in the families of pirates may find this an enjoyable read. I received a free copy through NetGalley and all opinions expressed are my own.

I love this trend of female writers giving voices to women that have been over looked in history. This novel really breathes life into a little known story of a pirate's wife. It's a moving, heart-felt story that reminds me a bit of a shakespeare tragedy. But with a strong female lead overcoming this waves her husband left for her.

This was a deeply moving and empowering read. I love pirate history, and too often the women associated with them get overlooked.

I really liked how this book was organized into short and succinct chapters that go chronologically through Sarah’s life — it really made it hard to put down and it was a very enjoyable read! The research was very well done in this book, but I felt that there were many assumptions or generalizations made into what Sarah or other people were thinking at the time when there was no evidence that this was drawn from; in trying to make this an approachable and narrative-driven historical memoir, I think the author went a bit too far into putting her own ideas of the characters onto them instead of focussing on what is known. Other than that, I thought this was a well-rounded book that definitely had lots of interesting information in it.

An engaging & sympathetic biography of a woman largely forgotten. Sarah's time as Kidd's wife took her from riches to poverty & her husband from hero to pirate. The book relies on primary sources throughout & shows, in addition, where newspaper accounts t the time went wrong.

I was given an advance reading copy (arc) of this book from NetGalley.com in return for a fair review. Pirates always make fascinating subjects--at least for me--and I couldn't resist a nonfiction book about Captain Kidd's wife. While the book was interesting, it didn't quite provide the detail I was looking for. Captain William Kidd was Sarah Bradley's third husband. She was widowed twice before she married Kidd. They lived a life of wealth and respectability in New York with their two young daughters until it all went wrong when her privateering husband left on a year-long voyage in 1696. It would be three years before Sarah would see him again. During the time he was gone, his crew mutinied, and Kidd was accused of murder. His fall from grace negatively impacted his family, but Sarah stood by him. He ultimately faced trial in England and was hanged for his crimes. According to author Daphne Palmer, Sarah fought hard for her husband, but her efforts were of no avail. While she was truly the wife of a 'pirate', she didn't sail with him or take part in his adventures. She was simply a woman of her times left behind to take care of family, home, and business. Where facts were scarce, Palmer gave an opinion, which isn't always a good thing when it comes to writing nonfiction. I did enjoy the book and it was a quick read, but I felt it was lacking when it came to Sarah's story.

The Pirate’s Wife is a great nonfiction about Sarah Kidd. It followed her life as she was married and widowed several times. I enjoyed seeing how the wife of a privateer/pirate lived. The home front was interesting and intrigued me. Sarah was an engrossing person to read about. She lived through so many events and found a way to bounce back every time. It was so good and worth the read for any pirate lovers out there.

I received an arc via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

I knew next to nothing but the name Of renowned pirate Captain Kidd. I never gave any thought to his wife until I saw this book.
It’s an enlightening read about an enterprising colonial woman who was stereotypical for her time but also unique.
Married four times she survived extreme loss and also restoration.
The author does a good job of describing her life within the context of the period and the escapades of being a pirates wife.

The Pirate’s Wife is the non-fiction account of the life of Sarah Kidd, whose third husband was the infamous Captain Kidd. Sarah lived a long and interesting life; born in England, she came to the colonies as a teenager and was promptly married off. Through her first husband, she became a wealthy woman and a merchant, and her fortunes continued to rise through her marriage to Kidd, at the time a respected sailor. The book explains the factors leading Kidd to become a pirate, shining a light on the important place piracy had in the development of the American colonies’ economies and the role the British elite had in Kidd’s rise and fall.

Likes: Geanacopoulos used an incredible number of sources, including many fascinating primary sources like Sarah’s will, to build her narrative. The details she includes, such as the items Sarah brought to her first marriage as a 15-year-old (quite young even for the time) or Sarah’s growing ability to write (as seen in her changing signature), help bring these people to life even after 400 years. The book really shines when it takes on the tension between the pirates’ peculiar brand of democracy on one hand and their deep involvement in the global trade of enslaved persons on the other. For instance, Captain Kidd made several attempts to provide for the widows and children of two pirates who died on his voyage (per the pirate code – yes, a real thing – the families of deceased pirates were owed specific payments), yet he had no problem bringing two enslaved children from Madagascar to the colonies and then into prison with him in both Massachusetts and in England as he awaited trial.

Dislikes: The prologue, in which the reader meets Sarah on her deathbed, is in a speculative and dramatic style at odds with the dispassionate, careful scholarship of the main narrative and detracted from the book. Even in the main narrative, the speculation as to what Sarah might have been thinking or feeling became distracting. A little conjecture is fine, but it reached a level that felt unnecessary.

FYI: slavery, death of a child, death of a parent, imprisonment, capital punishment.

The Pirate's Wife is an intruiging look into the little known life of Sarah Kidd, wife of the famed pirate William Kidd. Geanacopoulos has crafted a story that solicits empathy for Sarah and makes you realize justice for Kidd was never going to happen. While not deep in detail, there's enough story to keep you reading. It's a good read.
Thanks to #NetGalley and #HarlequinTradePublishing for the opportunity to preview this book.

There are lots of problems with pirates. However, the biggest problem for an author is that they tend to leave no records and anything they do leave behind is probably a lie.

Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos's The Pirate's Wife runs into this issue and more. It is a biography of William Kidd's wife Sarah. Kidd is famous for being a doomed pirate who may have been railroaded but also probably had it coming. Kidd is Sarah's third husband and she definitely seems like an interesting person to write a book about.

However, Sarah left little to no actual correspondence in her life. Much of the story needs to come from secondary sources or the author is forced to take her best guess. Geanacopoulos does her best with what she has but it's just too little to work with. I can see that Geanacopoulos is a good writer in how she adeptly tries to tell a complete story, but this subject just leaves way too many holes to write a full length non-fiction book.

(This book was provided to me as an advance copy by Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing. The full review will be posted to HistoryNerdsUnited.com on 11/8/2022.)

The works I have been reading lately have largely centered around Pirates and otherwise New York History. There've been a few exceptions. Even what doesn't seem to have an immediate association did end up with some connective tissue. It's been a great year for reading.

When I first came across this book, I had just finished a biography on Captain Kidd. It occurred to me that by learning more about his wife, I would get a look at that period and Pirates in general from a different point of view. I finished another book on a pirate, that of Captain Ned Low, a few days ago. That was adequate but it suffered the faults many books on Pirates do. There simply isn't that much unbiased or otherwise completely fabricated documentation on them. So where do we go? To fill the holes in history, we should start with those who were connected to these fabled people.

Sarah's story starts long before and ends long after her time with Kidd. He is husband number three (of four). She is a socialite of New York who, based on her actions in trying to save her Husband's life, must have been a force of a woman. There is much said about her early marriages and life in New York. The betrayal of Captain Kidd seems to hijack the story. Sure, the point is that she was, for a time, the wife of a Pirate. But for the years he is at sea and never returns I wished we had more on the day-to-day life of Sarah. What else was going on in her world?

A tidbit I hadn't known was that for a spell, Sarah and her fourth husband lived in Rahway, NJ. There is a persistent rumor that I feel has no weight to it that some of Captain Kidd's treasure is buried along the Rahway River. I lived for a while in Rahway. For all of its mentions of George Washington and other historical figures, I've never seen a single mention of her there outside of this narrative. She's not as prominent as a founding father but wife of a pirate has some heft to it.

This is a wonderful biography of Sarah and a great insight into her relationship with Kidd. The glutton in me wishes there was more but I'll take what I can get.

Sarah Kidd was a remarkable woman for her time. Transforming from New York socialite to pirates wife, she fit both roles. While the text was short on facts of her life at times, the history of piracy as well as New York's political climate made up for it.