by George MacDonald Fraser
Set in Cumbria on the Anglo-Scottish border, 1590s.
This short novel brings the strange and violent world of the Border Reivers
vividly to life. Read history books, such as George MacDonald Fraser’s
masterly The Steel Bonnets, and you might - after much study - get
some idea of the events that happened along the Anglo-Scottish border and
in the Debateable Lands. But read The Candlemas Road and you will understand.
Also memorable for its powerful characters: headstrong Lady Dacre, newly arrived
from London and finding Border ways incomprehensible; Archie Waitabout, the
irrepressible reiver with his pride and his unconventional but curiously compelling
moral code; and the narrator, a good and bewildered Jesuit priest whose conventional
faith is sorely shaken by the Border’s strange code of honour.
