The Highwayman

From Booklist - "F. M. Parker deserves a wide general readership"

The place is England in 1860. Patrick Scanlan, an orphan of seven, is sold into slavery to the owner of a cotton weaving mill in London. Always half starved, he at times stubbornly refuses to tend the weaving machine assigned to him. He is whipped or hung by his thumbs until he surrenders and goes back to work. Always watching for a chance to escape, he spots an opening and flees from the mill and onto the dangerous London streets with their thugs and thieves and whores. He survives by stealing.

In one of Patrick's nighttime prowls for something to steal, he chances upon Thief Takers, bounty hunters, lying in wait to kill Claude Duvall, a famous highwayman. Warned by Patrick, Duvall fights his way out of the trap. Duvall takes Patrick under his wing and trains him to become one of the elite class of thieves, a "Two Pops And A Galloper", a mounted highwayman with two pistols, who robs the rich travelers on the highways around London.

Thief Takers, bounty hunters, try to arrest Patrick and Duvall. Patrick shoots the Thief Takers. He is captured and given a sentence of life at hard labor in the penal colony on Van Diemen’s Land located on an island off the south coast of Australia. This is the harshest and most feared of all the English prisons,

Patrick, always rebellious, fights with other prisoners and often refuses to follow orders. For these actions, he is flogged with the cat-o-nine-tails. The day comes when he is willing to gamble the ultimate price, his life, to escape. He organizes a group of convicts into a plan to get off the island prison of Van Diemen’s Land and to Sydney. In the city, there might be an opportunity for escape. The cost to the convicts to get to Sydney is for one of them to die and one to hang for the murder.

Describing with vivid detail the reality of the slavery of orphans in England, the savagery of the prison on Van Diemen's Land, and the harrowing escape and journey upon the frigid Antarctic Sea, THE HIGHWAYMAN explodes with gripping passion and action and the incredible will of a man to survive.