It's May 1653. When fourteen-year-old Freddy O'Brennan trusts the wrong stranger on an empty beach in western Ireland, she inadvertently places herself in the crosshairs of Cromwell's notorious Reign of Terror.
Freddy awakens in the cramped hold of a slave ship bound for Barbados. Ripped from her loved ones, she endures a gruesome voyage and a vile auction. Freddy, sold to the highest bidder, alone, and far from her beloved homeland, faces the brutal realities of life as a female Irish slave on a seventeenth century Barbados sugar plantation. Amidst the island's treacherous beauty, she must find a way to bear her cruel, drunken Master using her as a breeding slave and kitchen drudge.
Heartsick with yearning for her family and the farm life she knew, Freddy reaches deep inside herself for the strength she needs to protect her young spirit from being broken. As she struggles to survive rape, degradation, beatings, and the harrowing spectacle of her Irish countrymen being flogged and starved to death, the high-spirited Freddy risks severe punishment by sneaking food and medicine to the suffering field slaves. Eventually she braves more serious threats for the sake of loyal friendship and love.
SPIRITED AWAY – A NOVEL OF THE STOLEN IRISH is a 60,000-word historical novel that paints an intimate, compelling portrait of 1650s Irish slavery in the Caribbean.