Blood, Steel, and Empire

More than one hundred years after Columbus blundered onto Hispaniola, the West Indies are held in Spain's iron fist, and no threat to that absolute rule is tolerated. But such total control cannot last, not with the riches of an empire at stake, and French, English, and Dutch all struggle to pry open the Spanish grip. But one threat will emerge as the most dangerous of all: the buccaneers. Camped on the shore of Hispaniola, these half-wild men eke out a living hunting the island's feral livestock. Among them, Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf-hulking, silent, deadly with musket and blade-lives out his exile, content that no one in the hunters' camp is at all curious about his past. But when a deadly hurricane sweeps through the Caribbean, it upends the buccaneers' rough existence. And it leaves in its wake opportunity as well, a chance for a new life for LeBoeuf and his fellow hunters. This stroke of luck, however, is not all it seems, and when even greater violence is visited upon them they find themselves locked in battle with some of the most powerful and ruthless men in the Spanish Empire.

With the Spanish Empire brutally driving the buccaneers from their hunting grounds, the half-wild men must look for a new refuge in the West Indies. They find it just a few miles off the northwest coast of Hispaniola: the island of Tortuga. Rugged, sparsely settled, but poised on the edge of Spain's trade routes, Tortuga is an ideal base for the outcast hunters. Among them is the hulking, enigmatic Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf, now a reluctant leader of the buccaneers. But LeBoeuf's interest in Tortuga involves more than simply escaping the Spanish Empire. Ownership of a plantation on the island has fallen into his hands, and it is his dream, his vision, to lay claim to that property and put an end to his savage and nomadic life. But once again Spain stands in his way, as a powerful fleet sent from Seville comes to route the buccaneers from their latest foothold. Among the expedition's leaders is Don Alonso Menéndez, lieutenant governor of the West Indies, who has designs of his own for the island and the land LeBoeuf intends to claim. Now the two men will battle for the beautiful Henriette and the hundred acres of paradise that is the Tortuga plantation.