The Book of Boy

His name is “Boy” and he lives on a medieval manor where he must deal with neighborhood bullies and a hard-hearted mistress.  Still, animals love him and he generally accepts his situation in an unsteady world recently decimated by the Black Death.  But everything changes when Boy’s mistress sends him off on a journey to carry the bags of a cantankerous pilgrim who is traveling to a nearby shrine.

 

Though the details of medieval life are spot-on and the storyline is nicely linear, this is not a straightforward work of historical fiction in the vein of Karen Cushman, Carolyn Meyer, or Ann Rinaldi.  Rather, in its textured examination of religion and flair for mysterious details that are revealed only gradually (Boy himself has an absolute whopper of an origin story!), it is much more akin to Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale (2016).

 

Readers who like intricately plotted historical fiction with an air of the miraculous will find this book worthwhile.