“A campaign in France that began too late in the season, a rebellion in London that paralyzed king and Commons, and a young serf named Haukyn caught up in both: therein lie the seeds of The Arrows of Fealty. Haukyn is a serf who owes fealty to the lord of the manor and whose life is tied to the soil, yet he craves adventure beyond the boundary stones of his village.” — Amazon book blurb
The middle son of an uncommonly well-educated serf, restless Haukyn does not feel the love for the land that binds his whole family, as his brothers and father do. Instead, the young man flees the only way he can, as an archer in John of Gaunt’s army on a campaign to France. Then, as now, money is freedom. “Eighteen winters to his name, and he’ll go home rich.” begins the story. Yet, after long months that bring neither freedom nor fortune, Haukyn finds himself reluctantly, angrily, back in the tiny village of his birth. Everything is an anchor around his resentful neck: the land his father gives him to till and plant, the hateful chores owed his otherwise lenient lord, the attentions of a village maid determined to win him as husband. The only thing that he wants, but cannot have, is Ilotte, the damaged woman he finds irresistible. Then a spark of hope, a chance of true freedom, appears, and Haukyn is drawn into a role of leadership, determined to right the social injustice of the feudal system. But an enemy made in France has the power to upset this fragile dream.
“MacLean has meticulously re-created a world long gone.”
The brilliant, and stand-alone, sequel to her story of Edmund of Flintbourne, Jill MacLean’s The Arrows of Fealty picks up the story with Edmund’s troubled son, Haukyn. And what a story it is! Discontented in his life as a youth, Haukyn matures into a man determined that if the land is to bind him, it will be land he owes no one for, that will be held freely for his children and grandchildren. All this at a time of the divine right of kings and no protections for the ordinary people from brutal overlords. Haukyn is both heroic and quixotic, and therefore deeply, relatably, human. Threaded through is the no less important story of fathers and sons, of family bonds and secrets, of what holds us together and how tightly. What fealties do we owe and to whom is a question as relevant now as then.
As with her first novel, MacLean has meticulously re-created a world long gone. It is populated by a varied cast of characters so vibrant and three-dimensional, it is impossible not to care deeply for them. Climbing between the pages brings new friends and reunites the reader with old ones from The Arrows of Mercy.
MacLean’s settings are timeless and timely, immersive, entrenched in the period through painstaking research and evocative description. Her prose is also carefully crafted to evince the era, the language, and terms of the 14th century woven through seamlessly. There is poetry and lyricism spun into every paragraph; Jill MacLean is, unquestionably, a gifted artist with words. And there is a deep wisdom in how she has shaped her story. The ending is both heartrending and inevitable. She knows her characters and by the end so does the reader, intimately.
About the Author
Jill MacLean's five novels for middle-graders and young adults won several awards and received numerous nominations, four of them international. Wanting a new challenge — and an adult audience — she delved into her abiding fascination with medieval England. She was born in Berkshire, the setting for The Arrows of Fealty, and revisiting it, in reality in the 21st century and in imagination in the 14th, has given her much pleasure. An avid gardener, reader and canoeist, she lives in Nova Scotia near her family.
About the Reviewer
Heather McBriarty is the author of the non-fiction account of the First World War, Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front and a novel of the “Great War” Amid the Splintered Trees. She is a blogger, reviewer and served as a juror for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards. She is a retired Medical Radiation Technologist, doting grandmother, and avid sailor. Heather lives by the sea in historic Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
Book Details
Publisher : OC Publishing
Publication date : Sept. 21 2025
Edition : 1st
Language : English
Print length : 436 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1989833551