SHANGHAIED
“So they Shanghaied [Dad] drunk and loaded him on the ship…we were left and never knew where he went.”
—Letter from the daughter of William Davis, shanghaied around 1874
It’s 1848 Portland, Oregon, and former “soiled dove” Abby Adams has escaped a life of indentured sex work to open her own joint. The only thing is, she had to strike a deal with her old brothel boss to kidnap ten customers a month for him to sell to ship captains short on crew. When she finds a “shanghaied” customer bleeding out by her entrance to the tunnel that runs underneath the city, she has to find out who’s behind it—before she loses everything.
The character of Abby sprang out of a couple lines on a microfiche slide about a 6’2” woman who lived in 1850s Portland. She could do her own bouncing in the bar that she owned. The image of Charlize Theron in Fury Road came to mind—but in a vermilion ball gown and a boss pair of boots, making something out of her life despite everything against her, and throwing anyone who got in the way out on his ear.