Saltblood by Francesca de Tores has won the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, Best Published Novel, sponsored by the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation and honoring "the best adventure writing today."
Organizers said Saltblood "charts the life of Mary Read, one of the few recorded female pirates during the 1700s 'Golden Age of Piracy,' fictionalising her story and filling in the many gaps left by minimal historical reports."
Prize founder Niso Smith commented: "De Tores has created a protagonist defiant of convention; a woman who, despite her start in life, transforms and learns to truly know herself. Saltblood is a triumph of imagination--breathtaking and boundless."
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The shortlist has been released for the $5,000 2024 Crook's Corner Book Prize, honoring "the best debut novel set in the American South." The winner will be announced in January. The shortlist:
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (Mariner Books). Organizers wrote: "Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance."
Coleman Hill by Kim Foote (SJP Lit). "Coleman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations."
Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer (Random House). "This tumultuous coming-of-age novel features an unforgettable protagonist, a character who narrates her life story with dark comedy and compassion for her family, even as they fail her. Those failures are the backbone of this surprisingly poignant story about hard bargains, family loyalties, and the grit of a woman determined to create a better life for herself than the one she was born into."