Welcome to Once Upon a Retelling! I'm a huge fan of retellings, and I'm really interested in hearing about authors' own love of the original stories, and what inspired them to retell those stories. And so Once Upon a Retelling was born, a feature in which I interview authors about their versions of well-loved tales.
I'm really excited to have Miriam McNamara stopping by the blog today to talk to us about her retelling of the life of historical female pirate, Mary Read, The Unbinding of Mary Reade.
Can you tell us a little about The Unbinding of Mary Reade? What kind of a retelling of Mary Reade’s life is it?The Unbinding of Mary Reade is based on the life of Mary Read, a pirate who was part of Jack Rackham’s crew near the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. When I originally set out to write her story and began researching, I discovered that what many people take as fact about Mary’s life comes from a book called A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, which was published under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson in 1724. But this book is full of information that conflicts with confirmed historical record, and there is still no consensus on who actually wrote the book (Daniel Defoe is often listed as the author, but many experts believe that it was almost certainly not him). Most of what we know about Mary’s life is little more than a story, so I decided to retell that story by putting what drew me to Mary’s character front and center.
