The Highwayman's Footsteps
Award winning author Nicola Morgan's latest novel was inspired by Alfred Noyes famous poem The Highwayman
When high-born William de Lacey saves a highwayman's life, he cannot guess how his own life will change.
We first meet the young William de Lacey with his face in the mud and a pistol at his ear. We soon learn that he is high born and has run away from his cruel, powerful father, bullying brother and rich comfortable life. Gradually, as the tale unfolds, we discover the dreadful truth about his family and how he came to leave. As his relationship with the enigmatic Bess develops, he learns many harsh facts about the world that have been disguised or distorted by his pampered life and he begins to question everything that he has previously accepted.
This book works on many levels. First of all, it is a rip-roaring yarn, which rattles along at a good pace, with our young heroes encountering wicked and dangerous characters at every turn. The historical setting stinks and squelches with dung and mud, cold, uncomfortable journeys, narrow streets and busy markets. The feeling of imminent danger is palpable throughout and each encounter faces Will with a new moral dilemma, which he struggles to resolve. The character of Bess is a feisty female, who tuns all Will’s preconceptions upside down. She dresses in male attire like the bold young women immortalised in so many ballads and she writes the poignant story of the impoverished Henry Parish into a ballad.
Ballads were not just the entertainment of the common folk but the protest songs and the underground press of their day. Nicola Morgan took the story of Henry Parish from a real event, which was the subject of great protest in the late eighteenth century and to this she added much of the imagery and rhythm of Alfred Noyes poem, The Highwayman, to heighten the emotional impact of the events. Take a passionate poem with a driving rhythm and tragic and romantic story and from it weave an historical tale of danger, adventure and derring-do and you have Nicola Morgan’s splendid novel for young people of 10+ ‘The Highway man’s Footsteps’.
