Bloody Jack – L. A. Meyer

Author: L. A. Meyer
Title: Bloody Jack
Publisher: Harcourt
Publication Date: 2002
Age range: 12 - 16
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5

Plot summary: Mary “Jacky” Faber lives the life of an early 19th century London street urchin following the death of her entire family due to a nasty plague. Accustomed to keeping her wits about her and surviving on beggar’s earnings, Mary finds a new family and friendship with a gang of similar orphans. They all live in fear of a man named Muck who collects corpses to sell to medical students and doctors for dissection. When the leader of their orphan gang is killed, Mary grabs her chance to escape London, dons the boy’s clothes, and volunteers as a ship’s boy on the HMS Dolphin. Calling herself “Jacky,” she assists the ship’s tutor, as she possesses the valuable skill of being able to read. The smallest of the ship’s boys, no one suspects she is a teenage girl, and she takes great pains to reinforce what she calls ‘the Deception.’ She can’t help but fall for Jaimy, though, the only one of the ship’s boys with any breeding and manners.

The new gang of friends bond over anchor tattoos, shore leave, and their plans to move up the ranks of the sailors as they grow bigger and stronger. But Jacky has trouble staying out of harm’s way and keeping her head down. She makes enemies of sailors who believe they have the right to abuse ship’s boys as the lowest of the low on board, and has to fend off the advances of one or two men with unsavory inclinations toward helpless young boys. When Jaimy finds out that Jacky is actually a boy she is thrilled to no longer keep up the deception with him – and he is smitten with her. Unfortunately they are separated when the ship nearly sinks after a battle with pirates – Jacky just can’t seem to catch a break!

Comments: Jacky is quite the character – confident and self-reliant yet always getting herself into trouble and wishing her life would contain just a little less adventure! This book is very funny – Jacky thinks she is dying when she starts menstruating for the first time because she has never had a female role model to tell her what is going on. The lengths that Jacky must go to to hide her gender range from hacking off her hair as short as possible to rolling up some fabric and sewing it into her underwear to create the right sort of silhouette. She distinguishes herself with her sewing skills and desire to better herself, recognizing that education and observation are the keys to a better life. Jacky can get a bit carried away trying to show off, with music and dancing skills, and it always gets her into trouble to attract so much attention, but she can’t seem to help it! I look forward to continuing to read this series, as Jacky is enrolled at a finishing school in Boston after she helps recover a shipload of pirate treasure. Will she and Jaimy be separated forever?

Dates Read: 22 – 28 March