The Pirate's Daughter
Read The Pirate's Daughter Online
Authors: Robert Girardi
THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER
“WITH ITS INTRICATELY WOVEN PLOT AND RICH TAPESTRY OF LANDSCAPE AND PLACE,
THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER
ACHIEVES THE RARE GOAL OF A NOVELIST OVERSTEPPING HIS DEBUT OUTING.”
â
New York Post
“A SINISTER AND LUSTY ROMANTIC ADVENTURE propelled by fluid narrative style laced with disturbing undertones.⦠Intensely atmospheric, occasionally cynical, yet somehow timeless in its sensual tone, the book is a clever and intriguing balancing act, a fantasy with enough real-world roots to make it all seem as horribly plausible as it is wonderfully entertaining.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“Girardi gives a new twist to high-seas piracy â¦Â [and] offers a frightening and all-too-possible vision of a near future.”
â
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
“DIDN'T THINK AN OUT-AND-OUT ADVENTURE STORY COULD BE WELL-WRITTEN? THINK AGAIN.”
â
Dallas Morning News
“COMPELLING â¦Â [
The Pirate's Daughter
] combines the travel adventures of Gulliver with the charm of the people thrown together in
Lord of the Flies
.”
â
Arizona Daily Star
“What I admire about Girardi is the exquisite manner with which he renders the melancholy of the physical world, and brings it to bear as a force acting on human aspiration. Very few fiction writers have his grasp of history, worn this lightly.”
âAnthony Giardina, author of
Men with Debts
and
A Boy's Pretensions
ROBERT GIRARDI'S PREVIOUS NOVEL,
MADELEINE'S GHOST
“A FAST, CAN'T-PUT-IT-DOWN READING EXPERIENCE â¦Â A vibrant gumbo of ghosts and gypsies, lovers and others.”
â
New Orleans Times Picayune
“A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT â¦Â part love story, part ghost story, always absorbing.⦠Girardi tells a satisfying, memorable tale with masterful skills.”
â
Los Angeles Times
“[AN] ATMOSPHERIC, SWEET-NATURED FIRST NOVEL about the miraculous power of love â¦Â filled with a rich cast of supporting characters.”
â
San Francisco Chronicle
“[GIRARDI] WEAVES A TALE THAT KEEPS YOU ON THE EDGE WELL INTO THE NIGHT.⦠After you pick this one up you'll be waiting for more.”
â
New York Post
“HAUNTING â¦Â AN ENGROSSING, FAST-PACED DEBUT that moves almost effortlessly between New York, New Orleans and the 19th-century South â¦Â Mr. Girardi deserves a round of applause for pulling off the incredible ending. Potentially unbelievable, in the writer's capable hands, it is a sterling example of tight, finely honed storytelling.”
â
The Washington Times
“A spirited debut deftly mingling past, present, and the vastly different worldviews of New Orleans and New York â¦Â Entrancing scenes and characters, exquisite timing, and a mausoleum full of plot twists make for a fluid and truly memorable delight.”
â
Kirkus Reviews
“A FIRST NOVEL OF ASTONISHING ACCOMPLISHMENT â¦Â with startlingly few slips and a shimmering style â¦Â [Girardi] drives his tale along with sensuous prose.”
â
Publishers Weekly
A Delta Book
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Girardi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, New York, NY.
The trademark Delta
®
is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48955-5
Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press
v3.1
 â¦Â and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.
âHerman Melville
T
HE
E
MPEROR
,
THE
P
AGE
OF
W
ANDS
Coming home from work one Monday evening in August, Wilson Lander found two tarot cards face up on a side street of the out-of-the-way neighborhood where he lived. They were the Emperor and the Page of Wands. In the peculiar light of that hour, the cards seemed to glow with hidden meaning, two bright rectangles against the dull brick pavement.
Wilson paused, loosened his tie, bent toward them. The empty street ticked like a clock. The Emperor showed a stern white-bearded old man perched on a throne set against an arid mountainous landscape that looked like Africa. The Roman numeral IV floated in the sky over the head of this mysterious potentate. The Page of Wands was a young man wearing a red cloak and holding a wooden quarterstaff from which new leaves were sprouting. In the far distance, the same dry African-looking peaks.
Wilson studied the cards for almost five minutes, a curious prickling at the back of his neck. He was not an irrational man, but a tragic childhood had colored his adult life with a pervasive sense of dread. Dread was a way of life for Wilson Lander. He breathed it in as air, he wore dread as other men wear underpants and socks, and so he took the tarot cards as a sign of terrible events to come. Almost without thinking, he scooped them up and put them in the breast pocket of his blazer.
“This thing could mean good luck,” he announced to the blank facades of the warehouses, to the emulsion stink in the air. “Why the hell not? Luck can be good or bad just as easily ⦔ But he was a man who did not usually talk to himself, and he did not believe his own bravado. How did the cards get there in the first place? During the day, the streets of the Rubicon District were full of tough, plaid-shirted truck drivers and factory workers in steel-toed bootsânot the sort of men to be fooling around with superstitious nonsense. Dread sounded in Wilson's head like a great bell ringing the Angelus.
Later, in his small apartment overlooking the wharves of the Black Star Line in the Harvey Channel, Wilson tried to forget about the tarot cards. He drank a beer, watched the news, made himself a quesadilla and salad for dinner, and got into bed early, in his pajamas. The small bedroom pooled with fading blue light. The sense of dread was so strong now it made his stomach hurt. He lay sleepless for hours beneath the thin sheets, listening to the rattle of the air-conditioning unit in the window, imagining his mortality taking shape just beyond the thin membrane of mundane events. Growing claws, sprouting feathers and scales, a monster on the other side in the eschatological gloom.
The next day, Wilson called his girlfriend and told her he would not be coming to work.
“What is it this time?” Andrea said, her voice tight through the crackle of her portable phone. “Another panic attack?”
“Don't ask me to explain,” Wilson said, not wanting to tell her about the tarot cards.