Historical adventure
for anyone who likes a thrilling story
"A terrific tale, gripping from start to finish." The Times
"Robert Louis Stevenson on caffeine..."
Shortlisted for the Royal Mail Awards
Nominated for the Highland Books Awards
Published by Walker Books (UK) in 2006
and Candlewick (US) in 2007
If you liked Fleshmarket, you will love this!
People tell me they liked Fleshmarket because it was gripping and because it vividly showed what it would have been like to live in poverty at that time. It was also quite often rather shocking and people would wince while reading it - but readers seemed to like wincing. Well, The Highwayman’s Footsteps has many of those elements.
However, some adults said they found Fleshmarket almost too shocking. I don’t think they will think the same about The Highwayman’s Footsteps. There is suffering, and even death - sorry! - but no surgery without anaesthetic. (Not quite). Oh, there are some leeches. And I’m afraid that something rather unpleasant does happen to the ..
But really, it’s just an dramatic, emotional story - pure adventure. Suitable for anyone who can read a full-length novel.
Q: What’s it about?
A: Dark deeds and danger, set in the gruesome 18th century. It follows the adventures of Will and Bess, two young people thrown together by circumstances.
Will is highborn, the son of a High Sheriff, but he has run away from home after arguments with his father and hated older brother. He steals money for food, and is on the run from the redcoats. Seeking refuge in a ruin, he finds that he is not alone: someone else is hiding there - a highwayman, who captures him at gunpoint.
Bess is the daughter of a highwayman. Her parents are dead. Her father had taught her to ride and use weapons. After his death, she was cared for by Aggie but when Aggie died, Bess was left on her own, aged 13.
Bess, now 14, is very strong and independent - she has to be. Will is not - but he learns to be. He thinks he’s a coward, because his father and brother always told him so, but during his adventures with Bess he finds courage that he could never have imagined.
Bess hates the redcoats because they killed her parents. So, when Will and Bess come across a young deserter, on the run from the redcoats for stealing flour, they vow to help him. But the redcoats are determined to catch Henry Parish, and so Will and Bess face great danger.
Will also discovers something terrible about his father and vows to make him pay. Will and Bess now have a double mission: to defend Henry Parish and take vengeance on the redcoats and Will’s father and brother.
Q: How did the idea come about?
A:
It was during a conversation with my editor (Chris Kloet - who did Fleshmarket with me). ’Why don’t you do historical adventure again, something really dramatic?’ she said. ’Something about a highwayman?’ I suggested. That afternoon, I wrote the first chapter. I emailed it to her immediately and she emailed me straight back: ’Terrific! Terrific! Terrific!’ She doesn’t normally say things like that so I decided it just might work.
Walker Books commissioned it straightaway and it was taken up by Candlewick in the US too - and the deal included a sequel.
It was SUCH fun to write! The most fun I’ve had as a writer.
Q: Where is it set?
A: The north of England , mainly the ghostly, wild Yorkshire moors. Will is from near Hexham in Northumberland and many scenes take place there and on the southern edge of the Yorkshire moors, as well as in Scarborough and Durham.
Q: When exactly is it set?
A: 1761. The year of the Hexham riots - when local people protested against the way they were forced to join the militia. The authorities decided that the ring-leader was an old man - they hanged him for it. But then they discovered that he hadn’t even been there that day. This incident becomes very important in fuelling Will’s anger - he hates injustice and wants to fight against it.
Q: What about the title?
A: I was hoping you were going to ask that! As soon as I started thinking about highwaymen, I was drawn towards my favourite poem, perhaps my favourite piece of writing anywhere: The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes. For me it is perfect - emotional and skilful. It’s just SO beautifully tragic!
It is about a highwayman and his lover, Bess, ’the landlord’s black-eyed daughter’. The redcoats want to kill the highwayman so they set a trap, tying Bess with a gun against her heart. But she wriggles until her finger is on the trigger and then waits till her lover approaches on his horse - when he does, she pulls the trigger, to warn him that the soldiers are waiting. To warn him - with her death. She dies and he gallops away, not realising what the shot meant. Later, when he hears of her death, he gallops back in fury and allows the redcoats to shoot him dead, ’down like a dog’ on the road.
So, when I knew I was going to write story about a girl who was a highwayman, I knew she had to be connected. I decided that the highwayman and the landlord’s daughter had had a baby and that the story of their deaths would affect that child as she grew up. I knew that Bess would be brave and beautiful like them, but human and real too, with problems and depth of character.
And the title? Well, Bess follows in the footsteps of her highwayman father. His spirit guides her and she will never forget him and all that he taught her about honour and bravery. Nor will she forget her hatred of the redcoats for killing him .
Q: Themes? Just in case your teacher asks you to write about them..
A: Honour, courage. Right and wrong - is it ever right to steal? Looking at things through 18th century eyes - should we judge in the same way? How does your background and childhood affect the way you think? Should you open your eyes to other ways of thinking? What is justice - can the law ever be wrong? And if the law is wrong, should we act to change it or wait for it to be changed legally? Class prejudice, the role of women, and religion, all come into it too.
Two more things you might like to know:
Henry Parish - the deserter whom the redcoats chased - was a real person. Remember that when you read The Highwayman’s Footsteps. Henry stole the flour because his family were starving but the soldiers wanted it to whiten their hair. Often it’s the small people who change history - it was partly because of him that the British army decided to change its policy of using flour to whiten the hair of the soldiers.
And finally - the sequel!
It’s called The Highwayman’s Curse. Will and Bess are on the run and find their way to south west Scotland. They become involved with some smugglers, and a whole new set of adventures, with more dark, dangerous and dastardly deeds. But you will have to wait till autumn 2007, I’m afraid.
I hope you find The Highwayman’s Footsteps exciting. And if you do - email me to tell me.
And please, please, please, write a review on Amazon ...
Main reviews
The Times (link to review online)
"Alfred Noyes’s poem The Highwayman is part of many children’s education, even today. Its romantic sense of doom, its repeated rhythms and the drama of its betrayed lovers are unforgettable, and Nicola Morgan has had the excellent idea of creating a historical novel, The Highwayman’s Footsteps, inspired by it.
Any story that begins with its hero feeling the cold metal of a pistol at his skull should seize a child’s attention. William de Lacey is running away from his cruel, snobbish father and bullying brother. On a lonely moor, the highwayman who holds him up is soon revealed as a wounded, fainting girl. Will’s new friend Bess is, in fact, the highwayman’s daughter, who has inherited her father’s sword and her mother’s black-eyed red-lipped beauty.
Fierce and resilient, she tells Will her parents’ story, not in Noyes’s rolling ballad but in flat, hard prose, making it all the more shocking. Will gains confidence and self-reliance — as you would expect from the author of The Leaving Home Survival Guide, but out on the eerie, haunted, purple moors he also discovers compassion and respect for the poor, in the shape of Henry Parish — a real-life redcoat, who was executed for stealing flour used to powder soldiers’ hair, to feed his starving mother and sister.
Each chapter is only eight pages long, but packed with detail about the care of horses and the brutality of Georgian life. Morgan is a skilled storyteller who exposes the seamiest sides of history and explores ideas with real feeling. She shows us the miseries of poor people’s lives in England’s “golden age”; it isn’t Coram Boy, or Leon Garfield’s Black Jack, but it is a terrific tale, gripping from start to finish." (Amanda Craig)
The Herald
"...the novel gallops along at a cracking pace, packed full of plot twists." (Vanessa Curtis)
The Scotsman (link to review online)
"...a challenging and deeply satisfying read." (Kathryn Ross)
The Telegraph
"If what you are after is really serious retro-adventure, then it doesn’t get more sincere - or hauntingly conjured - than The Highwayman’s Footsteps ... From the opening chapter we are hauled into the perilous life of young William de Lacey, on the run from the King’s Army and from his own family, and who finds himself teaming up not with a highwayman, but a highwaygirl: Bess. Muskets are fired, horses are stolen, confidences are betrayed, shelter is sought in freezing, stinking hovels and all of this is played out against the unforgiving winter landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Jeopardy lies round every corner, but Will and Bess come to form an impressive team, having constantly to think on their feet to stay ahead of soldiers and treacherous family members. There is no let up either in pace or atmosphere." (Sinclair McKay)
The Bookbag (link to review online)
"...a wonderfully well-written book, with well-chosen vocabulary and serious moral dilemmas. It’s meticulously researched and a real epic of an adventure story too. Highly recommended for 10s and up." (Jill Murphy)
The Northern Echo
"DANGER and fear jump out from every page in this gripping historical novel. Set in the time of highwaymen and private militia during the 18th century, it follows the fortunes of a young teenage boy who has fled his wealthy family after being constantly derided as a coward. William seeks refuge in a ruined house and finds himself confronted by a gun-wielding highwayman, who turns out to be a girl. Together they embark on a life of justiceseeking adventure. There are no holds barred in this heart wrenching and highly recommended novel. (Age 11+)" (Rosalind Kerven)
Scotland on Sunday (link to review online)
"HOW many children have learned about metaphor using the example "The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas" from Alfred Noyes’ poem ’The Highwayman’? If even a fraction of them are drawn to Nicola Morgan’s book on the strength of that, she is on to a winner in the first of what is to be a historical adventure series.
Noyes’ poem runs throughout the novel and is the catalyst for much of the action. Morgan follows in the highwayman’s footsteps by stepping confidently into his leather riding boots and galloping off with a teen novel whose strong characters, vivid language and runaway plot not only stand, but deliver too. ....
Assumptions are challenged - the aristocratic Will is forced to revise his views on girls since Bess dresses like a man and stalks into taverns, and Bess realises not all redcoats are evil - and morality is shown to be ambiguous as the pair hurtle towards an ultimate confrontation with the forces of corruption.
As well as the poem, Morgan incorporates real events into the plot with the story of Henry Parish, a young redcoat executed for stealing flour used for whitening soldiers’ hair in 1795. Bess and Will’s attempts to help Parish are part of their crusade for honour and justice for the weak and the poor.
Morgan has a sound track record in writing for children and young adults, winning a Scottish Arts Council Award for her novel Fleshmarket, and the 2005 Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book of the Year for Sleepwalking.
A former English teacher and specialist in literacy, she founded and runs the Child Literacy Centre which advises parents on helping children with their reading. Tell them about The Highwayman’s Footsteps. That should help." (Janet Christie)
ALFRED NOYES links
www.poetry-online.org/noyes-alfred-poetry.htm
www.poemhunter.com/alfred-noyes/poet-6643/
www.poetry-online.org/noyes_the_highwayman.htm
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