Steel

Steel by Carrie Vaughn is a brilliant pirate novel.

Jill is sixteen. She lives in Texas. And she loves fencing. She is probably good enough to try out for the next Olympics. But when she loses a match - striking a fraction of a second later than her opponent - she starts to think that she may not be as good as she thought.

A few days after the match, Jill and her family leave for a vacation in the Bahamas. Because she is still focused on her loss, she elects to walk along the beach while her mom and siblings swim. That is when she finds the corroded tip of a sword.

Others might think of the piece of medal as junk, but Jill knows it is from the type of sword that her fencing foil is based on. So she keeps it. Later when her family is on a boat tour of the islands, Jill is knocked overboard.

When she surfaces she is no longer off of the coast of the Bahamas in 2011. She is in the same place, but about three hundred years earlier.

There begins Jill's pirate adventure. While she wants to get back to her own home, she will need to join the pirate crew and do what she can to survive. Vaughn has written a swashbuckling pirate adventure that will be a huge success among readers.

Vaughn, Carrie. (2011). Steel. New York: Harper Teen.