Jacky Faber and her classmates at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston are kidnapped while on a school outing and transported in the hold of a slave ship bound for the slave markets of North Africa.

In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family's Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her slave friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure.

From the backwaters of Georgia to the taverns of Philadelphia, Fin Button is the talk of the colonies. The British say she's a pirate. The Americans call her a mutineer. The crew of the Rattlesnake call her the most unlikely thing of all: captain. But with the Revolution on the verge of defeat, the Congress offers Fin a deal. If she can free a noblewoman held captive by pirates, the French may be persuaded to join the war. Fin's reward? A full pardon....