I knew Long John Silver and Dr. Jekyll, but I didn’t know David Balfour. I had also made some assumptions about the book “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson. I thought it involved pirates, the Carribbean or the Americas, long sea voyages and undiscovered places. Instead the story never left the country, was about Jaccobites and hiding from the law while walking across Scotland. I had a lovely copy to read that had full color leaves from N.C. Wyeth paintings, and deckled edges.
Basically the boy is tossed onto a ship. The ship goes around the top of Scotland, picks up a very dangerous passenger, and makes some other bad choices, eventually leading to the ship crashing before even passing Ireland. This leaves our hero on the West coast having to walk to the East coast. His questionable guide/best buddy/danger-magnet makes what would be a simple journey into an ordeal. Exploring the relationship between a young idealist and a morally grey realist seems to be a theme with Stevenson, and I saw a lot of echoes between these characters and that of Hawkins and Silver.
Apparently there’s a sequel. Hmm. I am now reading 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith, which is a serial novel that the author wrote for a newspaper, which probably won’t have any pirates in it either.
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