Kelli Klampe

Jayes is a powerful novel based on the true story of white slaves in early Colonial Virginia.

Jayes unfolds the swirling passion and pain experienced by one of these slaves. Jayes Mackey was an Irish girl wrongly convicted in the Irish Courts by an English judge in 1627. Before she could absorb the injustice of her situation, she was quickly crowded onto a ship bound for the Jamestown settlement of Virginia.

Popular modern history referred to these tormented souls as indentured servants, but historical documents from the period reveal a different story. They became slaves with no hope of earning their freedom, and most of them died within a year of their arrival in the colony. They were whipped, beaten, branded, nailed to pillories and treated worse than the valued livestock in Virginia. And they were WHITE. These early slaves in America were kidnapped, deceived, or convicted and sent to farm and build in the New World.

In 1635 there were approximately 30,000 white Irish, English and Scottish "servants." There were approximately 3,000 African servants. The African servants sold for about 50£ compared to the 5£ price for a white servant. The Irish/English/Scottish were easily replaceable through the corrupt English court system and had little value compared to the Africans who were born into slavery and less obstinate to their masters....

Jayes, The Mackey Chronicles begins in 1627 and takes us from Ireland to the shores of the New World they called Virginia. Colonial Virginia is a new world so different and so cruel, beyond anything an innocent young woman like Jayes could have imagined. It is a place where she is completely stripped, not just of her clothes but also of her freedom. Naked and alone, inspected like cattle and sold as a slave in Jamestown, Jayes is living a nightmare we could never fathom. Refusing to give up on life or her faith, Jayes makes friends with the Indians, despises her colonial masters, and tries to maintain hope that someday, she will return home to her beloved Ireland. Threaded through this heart-throbbing narrative, Jade also struggles to understand the romantic whirlwind of emotion from her experience with the captain of the ship of doom that brought her to America. Does she love or hate him? Does he really care anything about her? Will she ever she him again?

When you read her story it will captivate you. You will come to understand the plight that our relatives endured in early America. A story that has been kept out of our history books and schools. The truth about the birth of this country and those who were enslaved to build it, farm it. Without them, America may have never existed. It is time they are remembered, honored and heard.

Jayes tells their story. She will capture your heart and you will quickly love her, cry with her, and root her on. Learn about the relations between the Powhatan Indians and the Colonists of Jamestown. Jayes, is based on actual events and historically accurate details that took place in the early 1600s Colony of Virginia. This story is one that you will not want to put down and one you will never forget!