Maelstrom is book #2 of Chris Seabranch's epic Twenty-One Butterflies chronicles, the saga of a female pirate group. 
The Twenty-One Butterflies are thrown into a fast-paced rescue of two-thousand street children that the tyrannical Governor Johnson has enslaved to work in the dark and gruesome Monolith mines. Meanwhile a powerful artifact is discovered at the bottom of a mysterious vortex in the middle of the sea, and both pirates and the Governor will do anything in their power to get their hands on it. In the middle of dangers and action, young Buckeye struggles with her own sexuality as her relationship to her friend Dawn becomes more intimate. At the same time, she finds herself romantically attracted to Blake, the son of the most feared pirate in Gallows Sound.