Awesome!

I've forgotten how I got here. I was wandering around the Internet one night, and some link to someone I don't usually read got me to a mention of this book, which I loved as a child and had completely forgotten about. At least, it may have crossed my mind from time to time, but in shreds utterly devoid of useful information like author or title, as so often happens with books I read in my youth, although if you put me back in my grade school library (as it was then, not as it is now) I could go straight to them. I sort information spatially, and remember how to get to things even if I can't tell anyone else how to do it.

Anyway! My uni library has a great section of juvenile books, because it took over some elementary/junior high libraries at some point, and keeps adding to them. So I went and checked out Jade after I left my office yesterday, started reading it at dinner, and stayed up past midnight to finish it. It was even better than I remembered it. In brief, a girl in 1719 Virginia refuses to be groomed as a belle, is sent away to live with relatives, releases a cargo of slaves from the ship she's on and is flogged for it, then rescued by pirate queen Anne Bonney. It ends hopefully if not wholly happily (clearly Jade is going to come to a bad if glorious end sooner rather than later, but she'll go down fighting slavers; Anne Bonney marries a nice doctor and seems to succumb to pregnancy hormones . . . maybe she'll get feisty again once the children are in school).

I checked out only the one book, because I . . . really . . . must . . . grade . . . must . . . but I am looking forward to reading not only the other Watson books I remember but also ones my elementary school library didn't have. Highly recommend, people! If you don't have to grade, or you need fun procrastination material, check out Sally Watson.