Spirit of the Jamaican Maroons

She's a princess. He's a warrior. They're teenagers and deeply in love. Enjoying an intimate interlude, they're captured and shipped to the West Indies to be enslaved. Kwame fights deranged, fellow captives, and Teala is the object of the captain's lust. The drunk, egotistical captain bypasses a safe port during a storm, and the slave ship sinks off the coast of Jamaica. The teenagers reunite, escape to the mountains and meet Akoo. He adopts them and introduces them to the Maroons, a guerrilla-type, fighting organization of runaway slaves. Akoo is brutally killed by slave hunters, yet Kwame avenges his death . . . in full. A new, deadlier group of slave hunters is formed, with an objective to kill Kwame and the now very pregnant Teala. But Kwame again distinguishes himself in battle to the chagrin of the slave hunters and their sponsor, the ruling British authorities. So now, they want Kwame dead even more than before, offering a huge reward for Kwame's demise. However, the Maroon Chief intercedes. He stages a fake funeral for the teenagers. This deflects attention away, and Teala suffers through labor pains, but escapes with Kwame on rafts and a mule-drawn wagon in a desperate attempt to secure their freedom. This book is dedicated to my daughter Deborah Wright-Watson.