Pirates or Patriots
L. D. Watson
(Larry Watson Prod Services, Dec. 5, 2013)
Ephraim Bradford is seventeen years old in the spring of 1814 when he deserts from the British army. When his ship is commandeered by privateers Ephraim becomes a part of the pirate empire commanded by Captain Jean Lafitte. Within weeks the young Englishman, a merchant by training, is managing the sale of Lafitte's stolen goods in New Orleans. As Ephraim lands in America, a thousand miles away in the bustling city of Baltimore, Charlotte Fuller reluctantly marries a swindler twice her age. When her foolhardy husband is killed she is left starving and alone on the streets of New Orleans as the terror of an impending war sweeps the city. Desperate and near death the only work she can find is in a Bourbon Street bordello. Pirates or Patriots follows a young British merchant from the cold fields of Shropshire England to warm waters of the Mississippi delta and a young farm girl from the sunny shores of the Chesapeake Bay to the gritty underbelly of the French Quarter. On a warm summer afternoon the two fall in love only to be torn apart by their secret lives and the looming Battle of New Orleans.