The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

In their travels, Secundus explains how he found the rib of St. Cook reluctantly gives a silver cup and asks them to pray for her and her master-turned-husband, Sir Jacques.

He not only asks for Boy to attend him but also for a donation. Readily perceiving Cook's lack of sincere concern for Boy, the pilgrim, whose name is Secundus, tells her that he is going to Saint-Peter’s-Step. This curious pilgrim asks Cook if he may take Boy with him as a servant. Boy is climbing tree branches to pick apples when he encounters a traveler who looks like a pilgrim. The mistress of the house and their three children succumbed to the bubonic plague. Boy lives on a manor in France under the tutelage of Cook, a harsh mistress who inherited the estate when the master suffered an injury to the head that left him an invalid. Though Boy is awkward, shy, self-conscious, and socially ostracized owing to his hunchback, he proves to be truly one-of-a-kind. It is against this backdrop that Boy narrates his story.

This coincided with Avignon Papacy, a period of several decades in the fourteenth century when the Popes resided in Avignon owing to the hospitality French Popes encountered in Rome. The Book of Boy is set in the middle ages in the Holy Year of 1350, a year in which hundreds of pilgrims went to Rome in the wake of the bubonic plague. Murdock made a name for herself with her debut children’s novel Dairy Queen (2006). The Book of Boy (2018) is a young adult novel by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock