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When most people think of pirates, they think of the larger-than-life, swashbuckling, ruthless villains from the golden age of piracy and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie franchise. But before Blackbeard and Anne Bonny, there was Captain William Kidd.

Learn about the true story of Captain Kidd from his ninth great-grandson and bestselling Colorado author Samuel Marquis. Captain Kidd stands as one of the most notorious “pirate” outlaws ever, but, according to Marquis, his legend is tainted by lies. In his newest book, Marquis reveals the thrilling and tragic true story of the real man behind the legend.

“Part of what sparked my interest in Captain Kidd was indeed that he is my ninth great-grandfather on my father’s side and I wanted to tell his true story,” Marquis said. “The tale of Captain Kidd is simply a great American tale, one of nuance, triumph, and tragedy. He has over the centuries become an American ‘bad-boy’ icon like Jesse James, Billy the Kidd, and John Dillinger. The family tales and Kidd biographies I grew up with as a Colorado hellion were for the most part wildly inaccurate.”

Marquis hopes that his book will help set the record straight about his ninth great-grandfather and that readers will finally understand Captain Kidd’s full, complex, true character. “I would like readers to see Captain Kidd as he truly was, as a gray-shaded colonial American hero, and not as the falsely created, rapacious ‘villain of all nations’ and ‘notorious arch-pirate,'” Marquis said. “Captain Kidd was neither a villain nor a martyr, but a patriotic, loving, honorable, and indefatigable sea captain, community leader, warrior, husband, and father — one with more than a few internal inconsistencies and character defects. He was a democratic Caribbean buccaneer, a patriotic colonial American privateer and merchant sea captain, a New York gentleman, and a founding father of Trinity Church, a loving husband, father, and son, a defender of a fledgling nation in the New World, and a challenger to the imperial English Empire.”