Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray

First published: 1942; illustrated

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Coming-of-age, friendship, and travel

Time of work: 1294-1295

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: In and around London, England

Principal Characters:

• Adam Quartermayne, an eleven-year-old boy traveling the roads of medieval England, searching for his dog and his father
• Roger Quartermayne, Adam’s minstrel father
• Nick, Adam’s beloved dog, who is stolen by Jankin
• Jankin, a scheming minstrel, who steals Nick
• Perkin, Adam’s best friend

The Story

Adam of the Road is a quest tale in which Adam Quartermayne loses everything, only to regain it after successfully conquering the road and thereby reaching maturity. As the story opens, Adam is awaiting the return of his father, Roger Quartermayne, a successful minstrel. Adam has been in an abbey school for five months while Roger has been attending minstrels’ school. He is impatient for Roger’s arrival so that they can return to the road and the life of minstrelsy that Adam loves, but he is comforted by Perkin, his best friend, and Nick, his dog.

When Roger returns with his new sponsor, Adam and Nick say good-bye to Perkin and travel to London, where they remain briefly. When Roger is given time off from his responsibilities to his patron, he and Adam prepare to travel to the prominent St. Giles fair. Before their departure, however, Roger loses his prized war horse, Bayard, to Jankin in a game of dice. This sets the stage for the series of losses that will beset Adam on his travels.

On the road they again encounter Jankin, who has lamed Bayard through carelessness and cruelty. That night, while Adam and Roger sleep, Jankin escapes with Nick, leaving a message that he traded Nick for the crippled war horse. When Adam learns what has happened, he follows Jankin and Nick to the river Wey, where he sees Jankin getting away on a ferry. Adam swims after them, only to arrive on the opposite shore soaked, exhausted, separated from Roger, and no closer to Nick. Now Adam is on his own, and he begins his quest to find his father and his dog.

In Adam’s first adventure, he escapes from a robber and helps rescue an innocent merchant. Next, Adam reaches St. Giles fair, but is injured in a fall and adopted by a vicar and his sister, who take Adam’s colorful minstrel clothes and attempt to turn him into a parish clerk. When he joins a band of lower-class minstrels as a way of continuing his quest, they are discovered out after curfew and become the target of a “hue and cry.” In the ensuing flight, Adam is separated from the minstrels, one of whom still holds Adam’s harp. Adam is now bereft of all of his possessions and alone again.

Adam returns to the inn where he lost Nick and picks up Roger’s trail. He follows it to London but finds Roger gone. He decides to wait for his return but encounters Jankin and learns that Nick has run away. Adam travels to their former home in hopes of finding Nick, but Perkin has just taken Nick home to his family. Adam locates Perkin’s home and finds both his friend and his dog. He spends the last of the winter helping Perkin’s farm family prepare for spring planting, earning himself a new set of minstrel clothes in payment. With the gift of a set of pipes from the local miller, Adam is ready to return to the road; stopping to bid Perkin farewell, he finds Roger, and they set out together.

Context

Adam of the Road won the Newbery Medal in 1943. Its importance at the time and its continuing place in the children’s literature canon lie in its success as an example of historical fiction. The task of historical fiction is to reveal how the details of existence have changed, while demonstrating how elements of the human condition remain the same. Adam of the Road demonstrates a marriage of setting and story that contributes to the reader’s understanding of the thirteenth century, while telling the timeless tale of an adolescent’s search for independence and identity. In her Newbery acceptance speech, published in the July/August, 1943, issue of Horn Book, Elizabeth Janet Gray explained her desire to impart

the sense of history that gives us a perspective on the present and may help us to chart the future. It gives us a profound sense of being part of a long chain of life that went on years before us and will go on years after us, with customs and events differing in many ways but man’s problems and aspirations, his griefs and joys, remaining substantially the same.

Gray’s contribution to the field of children’s literature did more than impart a sense of history, address a universal theme, and indulge her interest in metrical romances and minstrels. She chose to write of thirteenth century England because “it was the century in which some of the principles we value most highly today had their inception.” The perception at the time that Gray published Adam of the Road was that World War II was being waged to preserve these very freedoms—of speech,

learning, and representative government. The novel is finally a story about freedom: the freedom to take to the road, the necessity for taking the road to maturity alone, and the certainty that one will meet kindness and goodness along the way.