Adam of the Road Book

I have always (or at least since learning how to read) enjoyed novels (whether they have been conceptualised for younger readers or whether they are geared towards more mature audiences) that have Mediaeval settings (and in particular so Mediaeval Europe, both the so called continent and the British Isles). But yes, in order for Mediaeval-themed and based historical fiction novels to adequately work for me, in order for them to be true personal reading pleasures, both a given author's featured writing style and his/her presented and shown factual content and themes have to read realistically, have to feel that I as a reader am actually firmly able to suspend my belief of reading a story penned not in the Middle Ages, that I can in fact and whilst reading easily enough pretend to see myself located in say the 13th or 14th century and not just sitting in the 21st century and looking into a distant and often blurry mirror (in other words, both writing style and thematics need to be reality based and not problematically anachronistic in scope).

And yes, Elizabeth Janet Gray's (or Elizabeth Gray Vining after her marriage) 1942 children's adventure novel Adam of the Road (which also won the 1943 Newbery Medal) totally and absolutely does fit all of the above for me, with its late 13th century (1294 A.D.) setting, with both main and secondary characters (and of course and in particular young minstrel in training Adam Quartermayne) but really with EVERYTHING in the author's presented text being delightfully and wonderfully of the featured and correct historical time and place and also not ever therefore feeling either out of temporal synch or that Adam of the Road is somehow supposed to be mainly a narrative tool for delivering mid 20th century (1940s) messages and philosophies superimposed onto the distant past, and which most certainly would have very much lessened the sense of historic reality that is such an important and wonderful part of Adam of the Road.

Furthermore, I also do very much do appreciate and enjoy that whilst following Adam's path of search and discovery (with Adam trying to locate the whereabouts of both his father Roger and his stolen dog Nick), readers are not only taken by Elizabeth Janet Gray on a grand adventure like tour of parts of Mediaeval England but are also offered a plethora of educational details and information about and on the same and the many different types of people one could find and meet up with in the England of the Middle Ages (from priests to peasants, from merchants to thieves) and all in a style of literary penmanship that in my opinion totally says "Middle Ages" and how people would generally have tended to talk and converse at that particular time, that Adam of the Road thus never demonstrates narration which does not fit in with the historical period of Mediaeval England, that Adam, Roger etc. all (in my opinion) converse like typical Mediaeval times individuals would have or are generally thought to have talked. Five stars for Adam of the Road and highly recommended (although I do think that publishers should perhaps consider a bit of a glossary for some of the time and place specific vocabulary and in particular with regard to church rhetoric, music and clothing choices).