Our Legend Lies With You

Despite the crime being punishable by death, tales of the high seas are flooded with romance and adventure, and nobody's life is as full of intrigue as the ferocious, seductive one of Anne Bonny. While the world is captivated by her legend, the true woman behind it is much more of an enigma . . .

Ann Fulford has spent a lifetime running away from herself. Destitute and unwilling to conform to eighteenth-century colonial culture, she joins John Rackum's pirate crew made up of social outcasts determined to create a place for themselves. However, after two months on the Caribbean Sea, their ship is captured by the English navy, and Ann finds herself stuck inside Spanish-Town Gaol, Jamaica. With inevitable executions just around the corner, there is nothing within the prison walls except the musings of Rackum's washed-up crew and her own inescapable thoughts...

Now at the end of her life, Ann memorializes the people that have come and gone throughout her life, culminating in her guarded nature towards the budding relationship with her shipmate, Maura Reed. As Ann faces the story that she leaves behind, she must also come to terms with the death that lurks beyond.

Our Legend Lies With You grapples with the conflicting natures of perspective and identity, and if the self can truly exist when the world sees another. In this debut novel, Lem Finney reimagines the story of some of history's most famous pirates through an introspective and empathetic lens to prove how our connections with others define who we are and the stories we pass on.