Longlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize in 2021, The Unwritten is A Robin Hood tale in its true and original guise of class rebellion.
England, 1369. Nor Sawsham, a clever peasant woman born in the wake of the Black Death, is forced into an abusive arranged marriage that produces no children. She realises her father-in-law, the ambitious and cruel Bailiff, will not let a little thing like her life stand in the way of his and his son's advancement.
Escape is no small thing and in doing so Nor finds other misfits like herself. Together they must find a way to survive outside the bounds of common law. Nothing is certain. She falls for a forest warden, who may not be all he seems, and is torn between loyalty to her friends and the prospect of a safe life. Meanwhile, her father-in-law will not give up his mission to make his son a widower...
This exciting historical adventure shows the working-class Fourteenth Century world to be, far from the staid feudal dullness of school history, as turbulent and diverse as our own.