An Earthly Knight
HarperCollins Canada
Lady Isabel Avenel has disgraced herself by eloping with a knight whom she soon kills in self defense. In twelfth century Scotland, this render her unmarriageable. As she waits to enter a convent, responsibility to raise the family’s status by making a good marriage falls suddenly on the shoulders of her free-spirited half sister, Jenny. When Jenny learns a mysterious young nobleman named Tam Lin is living in the ruined house that is part of her dowry, she sets out to challenge him, and finds herself enchanted instead. Isabel falls in love with an itinerant harpist and Jenny loses her heart to Tam Lin just before she catches the eye of the young king’s brother. Will either sister navigate past duty to find happiness?
Awards and Honours
Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards, Bruneau Family Children’ Literature Award
Mr. Christie Award, Silver Seal, senior category
Honour Book, Young Adult Book Award, Canadian Library Association
Honour Book, The Stellar Book Award, Young Readers’ Choice Awards of British Columbia
Why I Wrote This Book
I began to study folklore because I was a singer and, although I sang mainly in French, I was always drawn to the Child Ballads, a collection of story-telling songs assembled by Francis James Child at Harvard University in the mid-1800s. Some of these songs are found in many countries and languages, and some date back centuries. Anything can happen in a Child Ballad. While many end like Shakespearean tragedies, many have happy endings.
The inspiration for An Earthly Knight began with the main female characters from two Child ballads, “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight” and “Tam Lin.” I made these two young women sisters. Before the book begins, Isabel has already saved herself from a serial killer. Her reward is disgrace. In early Medieval times, who would marry a woman capable of killing, even in self defense? The ballad “Tam Lin” unfolds over the course of the book.
I loved writing a book set in early medieval Europe because it let me explore how a woman with spirit and courage could challenge the strictures of class, religion and gender to change her own fate, and those of the people she loved.
Reviews for An Earthly Knight
“McNaughton has winningly fashioned a medieval romance/fantasy, meticulously grounded in the historical reality of 12-century Scotland, passionately animated by trials and tribulations of chivalric romance and illicit love– and bewitchingly touched by elements of fantasy.”
— The Globe and Mail
“A compelling read. McNaughton creates a fully realized world, seamlessly weaving into her tidy plot elements of fairy belief. She has fashioned a tale of suspense and romance. A fiction of considerable breadth.”
— Quill & Quire
“The author does an excellent job of interweaving legend and history to create an exciting and engaging tale... The women, though bound by tradition and societal standing, show gumption and fortitude.”
— School Library Journal