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Jeffery S. Williams


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Jeffery S. Williams has been a high school English teacher and water polo coach for 20 years in Clovis Unified schools. In February, he received the CATE (California Association for Teachers of English) Classroom Excellence Award for 2007. Periodically, he writes educational chapters on classroom lessons for the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project publications.

Prior to teaching, Jeffery worked as a journalist and copy editor for the Merced Sun-Star and Fresno Bee, and wrote freelance articles for such national publications as Leadership Journal, Catholic Digest, Columbia Magazine and Christianity Today.

In the 1994, Jeffery completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno and published short stories for literary journals such as the San Joaquin Review and Epiphany. Last year he published his first novel Anne Bonney: My Pirate Story with iUniverse. Despite the challenges of self-promotion, the novel has become a Editor’s and Reader’s Choice with iUniverse, was made a book club selection for CatholicMom.Com
http://www.catholicmom.com/br_williams.htm, has been taken on as a screenplay project by DVD producer Tara Pinley (Double Indemnity, Poseidon) and most recently earned a second place award in the Readers Views Literary Awards Program.

Jeffery has been married for 22 years to his wife Katherine, who also teaches and has an 18-year-old son, Calvin, who will be graduating from high school this June.

He is in the process of finding a literary agent to represent his new novel Redeemer — a psychological crime thriller set in the Fresno-Clovis area, where Jeffery has lived since 1967.

Pirate Spirit: The Adventures of Anne Bonney

Jeffery S. Williams with Katherine Williams
iUniverse (2006)
ISBN 9781583484678
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (12/06)

Read the review on ReaderViews.com

Synopsis: Pirate Spirit: The Adventures of Anne Bonney follows the volatile youth of an illegitimate child, misbegotten aristocrat, rebellious daughter, hot-tempered teen, and cutthroat pirate who pines for seafaring adventures, true love, and the lasting bonds of friendship.
From her early days of enduring the abuses and cruelties from her blue-blooded classmates in Ireland and struggling to fit into aristocratic norms in the Carolinas, Anne’s prodigal tale leads her through the primitive corridors of the human spirit and explores the piratical perspective of “declaring war on the entire world.”


After eloping with James Bonney, an indentured servant, they slip into pirate-infested Caribbean waters, which proves a life-changing experience — offering a daunting series of fateful twists and turns. Anne Bonney’s story, inspired from historical accounts, tells the story of a woman who disguised herself as a man and fought side-by-side with pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham, Mary Read and a notorious band of rogues that plundered ships around the Spanish Main in the early 1700s.


Author Jeffery S. Williams provides insight into the intrigue and intricacy of piratical philosophy during its Golden Age. While being a good read for historical fiction and action-adventure enthusiasts, Pirate Spirit: The Adventures of Anne Bonney is also a classical coming-of-age tale, exploring the relationships with the people closest to Anne—her mother and father, her guardian angel, Edward, her friend Mary and her husband James—and the important roles each of these people played in her life.


Rife with intrigue, poignancy, and humor, Pirate Spirit: The Adventures of Anne Bonney is a vivid examination of a young woman’s odyssey from youth to adulthood as she seeks meaning and peace, eventually finding grace amid the darkest night of her searching soul.