Marine. Writer. Historian... Slave.
Calder Wulf is something of a jack of all trades, but that's not how his life started out.
As a boy, Calder's father wanted nothing more than to toughen him up. A good venture on the high seas as a cabin boy would be a remedy for thin skin, unless that trek ended prematurely at the hands of Barbary pirates.
Years in slavery and forced to fight, Calder grows up in the savage world of 18th century Algiers. When he's finally able to achieve his freedom, the boy finds that he's still a slave to his addiction. But when combat is both the solution and the problem, what is a young man to do?
Calder starts to look towards the newly developing United States Marine Corps. It's there that he hopes to find not only the purpose his life needs, but also the combat he desperately craves. As fate would have it, America is ready to take up arms against the Barbary pirates of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers that keep harassing the young country's shipping vessels.
It's time for Calder and the rest of the Marines, these so-called "leathernecks," to make their mark as they head for the shores of Tripoli.