[ Previous ] [ Next ]

[Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958]

There is not so much as a single mention of Banastre Tarleton in this book. I have nary an excuse for adding it to my list except random chance. Random chance tossed four RevWar books onto my reading pile this month. One of them I utterly detested. Two were stunning in their mediocrity. And then there was this one, which is lively, utterly charming, quite silly, and just the breath of fresh air I needed after slogging my way through Who Comes to King's Mountain?, fuming all the while. So it's getting a page, just because. Maybe I need to start a second list, that's RevWar but not Southern Campaign.

First off, let's be honest about it. It's a kid's book, it was written in the 1950s, and it's fantasy, so readers who consider any or all of the three to be fatal flaws, bug out now. You'd hate it. For anyone else, grab a copy and give it a try. You won't learn a danged thing about the RevWar, but chances are you'll grin a lot, and that ain't bad once in a while.

Like Cooper's The Spy, one of the parallel plotlines is set in the "neutral ground" outside New York City, between rebel and British lines. It follows the story of a British officer with the improbable name of Peaceable Drummond Sherwood (the author acknowledges that this is a seriously bizarre name for an 18th century Briton but never provides an explanation for it) whose band of Loyalists are being hunted by a young Continental officer, Dick Grahame. Dick's life is doubly complicated by the fact that, rather than simply running away like a good little enemy, Peaceable has taken it into his stubborn head to court Barbara Grahame, Dick's sister, on the cheerful assumption that the war won't last forever and in time it won't matter that they are, just at the moment, on opposite sides.

The name "Sherwood" is certainly significant. Its similarities to The Spy are largely confined to the setting, but the book bears an inescapable resemblance to old swashbuckler films in the vein of Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood. Dick Grahame is far more likeable than any incarnation I've seen of the Sheriff of Nottingham -- with the possible exception of Alan Rickman's -- but Peaceable captures all the insouciant joie de vivre of Flynn's Robin.

Like Disney's Swamp Fox or The Long March this book exists in a naïve 1950s fantasy realm that has little in common with the dirty and deadly situation it pretends to convey. In this case, the fantasy element is very literal. Framing the contest between Dick and Peaceable is the modern-date tale of teenaged Peggy Grahame, whose inattentive father dies and leaves her in the care of her equally inattentive uncle, a bachelor historian with no interest in raising a child. Soon after her arrival at his colonial-era home, Rest-and-Be-Thankful, she begins building a circle of intangible (but neither invisible nor imaginary) friends -- a circle which begins with Barbara Grahame, but soon includes Peaceable Sherwood and Dick's wife, Eleanor. Events weave between the present and past as they tell her their story, and draw her into a modern-day mystery which threatens to take her uncle's life. Also drawn into the web is Pat Sherwood, a grad student from England who has come to Rest-and-Be-Thankful in search of information on his ancestor.

Sherwood Ring is a delightful book on all counts, even if it is fantasy rather than historical fiction. Now this is how such things ought to be done. It could be held up to any number of writers as an example of how easy it is to write a swashbuckling adventure without sinking to the level of hate literature. The book has, in essence, no villain, rather a hero on each side of a schism which, by the time of the modern plotline, has become meaningless. A worthwhile message, for sure, and wrapped inside a frothy, amusing escapade.

Janie and Doc M reviewed this one at the same time they hacked at Who Comes to King's Mountain? (See The Silver Whistle under book reviews.) It has taken me a couple of years to get around to digging up the two books to read, and believe me, this is by far the better find!