An Earthly Knight
By Janet McNaughton

     After her sister Isabel gets caught trying to run away with unacceptable suitor and as much of her large dowry as they could carry in tow, Jeanette is left to become the head of the household. Between worrying about her sister’s fate with the church, her father’s struggle to regain the family’s honor, and trying to find out where her out-spoken, free spirit fits into the male-dominated, fanatical Christian-suffocated world, Jenny—at sixteen—never thought she could find any more stress or trouble to be thrown into. Soon she is chosen to be a possible bride for the King’s brother, William de Warenne, and she starts believing that no more trouble will come her way. Until, that is, the elusive Tam Lin shows up again on her father’s land in Carter Hall, Lin’s former family home. As a newborn he lost his entire household to death by food poisoning, then was rumored to have been kidnapped by the “wee folks” when he was young. Jenny’s father has warned her and Isabel to stay away from the decrepit ruins—that were to be Jenny’s dowry—until the boy is run off, but a strange occurrence brings the lives of Tam Lin and the outspoken Jenny together. What else will happen before the summer ends?! Only the “wee folk” of the neighboring forest know.

    “An Earthly Knight” is a marvelous story of the early days of Britain when the Normans and Scots were still trying to find a way to live in unison—a time when old religion met new religion in passive and sometimes aggressive ways. Jenny is the essence of the strong-willed, old-world women who fought secretly to hold on to the “pagan” ways and traditions that pulsed as strongly in their veins as the blood of the “new ways” did. She is funny, bright, and has the wit of a sixteen-year-old girl raised by a widower. Galiene, the nurse, is a wonderful portrait of the eavesdropping older woman whose caring nature helps her excel to a level of humanity no other humans have been capable of reaching. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who has a fascination for the old religion of the Highlands, of the medieval days of Kings, Knights, and Castles, and of those legends that never seem to fade too far into the darkness of the untouched forests.