In 1718, Blackbeard's decapitated head was hung on the banks of the Hampton River, in Hampton, Virginia. It was an official British Navy posting ostensibly meant as a message to those involved in high seas thievery that they, too, will meet the same fate.

The severed head swung freely for several years until one day it disappeared, its whereabouts becoming the stuff of legend.

In 2025, former FBI agent Dodge Chee Jones is sifting through the estate of a deceased friend on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation in Puget Sound when he stumbles on a 1920 letter from a long dead Native attending Hampton Institute. Originally founded exclusively for African American students, Native Americans also attended the school in the early twentieth century.

The intriguing letter explains that Blackbeard's lost head is boxed comfortably and secretly in the basement of the school museum, leaving its whereabouts indisputable, at least in 1920. But is it still there? Instinct, prompted by a childhood memory, tells Dodge that it isn't, and while a cross-country trip to Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) confirms his intuition, the trip nevertheless provides a bounty of clues that all point back to Puget Sound Indian Country, where Blackbeard's long-lost head is surely hiding.

Barrett Schmanska is the author of two mystery novels, Shuksan Descent and Ghost Puppet, both set within Indian communities in the Puget Sound region of Washington. The two mysteries were handmade as paperbacks in Barrett's basement workshop and then distributed to a dedicated community of readers on the Indian reservation where he works. Blackbeard's Lost Head is his first novel to be professionally published. Barrett has worked for Native American tribes in Washington State and Alaska for thirty years, primarily managing construction projects, to include an award-winning traditional Coast Salish longhouse on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation. He grew up in Hampton, Virginia, and holds a master's degree in urban planning from Virginia Commonwealth University.