Adam of the Road

Summary

Adam of the Road follows eleven-year-old Adam Quartermayne through a year of wandering in the England of Edward I, beginning in June 1294. Adam is boarding at the abbey school of St. Albans, learning his letters with his friend Perkin, a ploughman's son who longs to study at Oxford, while his red spaniel Nick lodges with an old woman, Dame Malkin, because dogs are not allowed at school. Adam's father, Roger, is a minstrel who has been in France gathering new romances, and Adam wants nothing more than to follow him. Roger rides up at last on his warhorse Bayard and takes Adam and Nick on the road. They join the household of Sir Edmund de Lisle, where Adam plays his harp, earns the respect of the knight's son Hugh by his horsemanship, and makes a friend of the daughter, Margery. At the wedding of Sir Edmund's daughter Emilie the minstrels gather, among them the smooth-tongued Jankin, and Roger gambles away his money and Bayard to him. Father and son set off on foot toward London, but at an inn Jankin slips away with Nick. Adam races after him, crosses the river at Guildford with the help of a ferryman's family, and loses both the thief and his father. Alone, he falls in with Daun William, a merchant whom he helps against an attack by a robber knight, and travels with him to St. Giles's Fair at Winchester, where he searches the crowds in vain. A fall while watching a play leaves him injured, and a kindly parish priest, Master Walter, and his sister, Dame Prudence, nurse him; Walter would make a clerk of him, but Adam keeps to his calling. He tries the company of a family of strolling players, leaves them over their thieving, and learns that Roger has recovered Bayard and gone to Sir Edmund's London house. Arriving there, he finds Roger has been called away to Wales, and he spends the winter in the household. Meeting Jankin on a frozen stream, he learns that Nick escaped from the thief long before. The trail leads back to St. Albans and on to Perkin's village, where Adam works to help Perkin go to Oxford. In Oxford Adam finds Perkin and Nick together, and Roger soon arrives. Offered a chance at schooling, Adam chooses to stay a minstrel at his father's side. The Viking Press published the novel in 1942 with drawings by Robert Lawson, and it received the Newbery Medal in 1943.

Top Lessons

• A calling worth keeping

  Adam is offered safer lives more than once: a clerk's place with Master Walter and schooling at Oxford. He chooses the minstrel's trade because it is the work he loves and the work of his father. The novel shows a boy weighing comfort against vocation and learning what his chosen trade will demand of him.

• Faithfulness in searching

  For months Adam keeps looking for Nick and Roger, through injury, winter and false leads. Gray makes the search the shape of the book, and Adam's persistence is rewarded only after he has also learned to help others along the way.

• Strangers on the road

  A ferryman's family, a merchant, a priest and his sister all take in a boy they do not know. The players he travels with, by contrast, steal. The book teaches young readers to recognize trustworthy people and to see hospitality as a mark of a good life.

• Fathers and their faults

  Roger is a loving father and a fine minstrel, but his gambling costs him Bayard and sets off every misfortune that follows. Adam continues to honor him without pretending the loss did not happen.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is incidental. After Adam is hurt in a fall at Winchester, he is nursed through his recovery in a parish priest's house by the priest and his sister, an accurate picture of the household and church-based care that served most medieval English people outside the few hospitals of religious foundations. No physician or treatment is described in detail.

• Winchester and Master Walter's house

  Adam's fall while watching a play at St. Giles's Fair and his convalescence under the care of Master Walter and Dame Prudence.