A LITTLE NOBLE

This middle-grade adventure features a teen whose destiny connects 17th-century France with Scotland.

Thirteen-year-old Mercy Laroche left London by carriage a month ago. It’s 1694, and she travels the dangerous Scottish Highlands to locate Kingsnot Silver. Mercy is an orphan and French native who participates in the Auld Alliance, whereby Scotland and France exchange learned young girls with messages as a bond that unites them against England, should that nation ever attack either neighbor. But near Loch Eirahn, the carriage crashes. Mercy wakes and finds no sign of her driver or her chaperone, Mr. Willicks. Thankfully, a lad about her age steps from the wilderness. This is Calum MacDonald, who offers to help Mercy proceed on her journey. He brings her to Red Rob MacGregor, the local clan leader. While MacGregor hasn’t heard of Silver, he believes that a famous seannachie (storyteller) named Henderson may have. Yet Henderson lives in Glencoe, the site of a massacre by redcoats who killed Calum’s family. The lad has vowed never to return, which is why he’s chosen life in the Highlands with an adopted clan. Mercy, who has a club foot and is supremely knowledgeable in herb lore, must find Silver before the Auld Alliance deadline expires in less than two months. In this sequel, Macreery crafts a sweet historical fiction tale that emphasizes loyalty and perseverance for middle-grade audiences. Mercy readily finds feverfew flowers to ease Calum’s headache. And she easily disproves his assumption that she’s useless in the wilderness (“city born and city lived”). Throughout, the pair’s light bickering contributes to a romance that the author stokes gently, as Calum consistently proves himself the white knight to Mercy (“Exhausted, bleeding...and definitely in pain,” he “handed the canteen to me first”). Scotland’s beauty is noted in lines like “The early rays of the sun danced along the water’s surface making the entire loch glisten like a beautiful jewel.” At the end, Silver isn’t what Mercy expected, and readers are treated to a revelation about the famous Unicorn Tapestries. A bold final decision makes Mercy and Calum’s next trek one to follow.

Readers will be charmed and educated by this lovely historical novel.