The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War

The Lionkeeper of Algiers reveals the extraordinary and unlikely story of Cathcart, who, thanks to his flair for languages and his formidable human intuition, rose steadily up the ranks from lionkeeper at the Dey’s private zoo to become Chief Clerk at the Palace, along the way amassing a chain of taverns in Algiers that functioned as safe houses and food banks for American prisoners.

Eleven years later, just one among more than one hundred US hostages in Algiers, Cathcart was paroled back to America and charged with delivering a vital letter to President George Washington, saving a tenuous peace deal and bringing the other captives home. Remarkably, his sense of honor compelled him to go back to Algiers – where he had never formally been made free – to see the peace project through. Cathcart would go on to become a U.S. diplomat in the lands where he was held captive for more than a decade.

Featuring some of the most prominent Americans of the era like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, as well as ordinary citizens like Hannah Stephens, the wife of a sea captain who tirelessly lobbied Congress until she was finally reunited with her husband after more than a decade, author Des Ekin’s captivating storytelling brings this adventure to life. This page-turning narrative follows the twists and turns of Cathcart’s own life upon the international stage of diplomacy, trade, and maritime statecraft at a time when America’s place in the world was hanging in the balance.