The Fourteenth of October

This great historical novel discloses the warm and colorful story of Saxon resistance to the Norman invasion of Britain. The story is a magical achievement: the reader shares, as in an immediate experience, in the life of a Saxon boy. With him, he watches the Danes come over the hill, lives as hostage in a Norman stronghold, escapes to Britain, shares in the memorable ride to the Battle of Hastings, and has to come to terms with a conquest that alters history. Saxon life and landscape, with brilliant reconstructions, take on a wonderful vitality. The eleventh century lives again in its own terms. The world of A.D. 1066 is that of any people whose freedom is ever threatened or whose way of life seems doomed.