The Traitor of Sherwood Forest
In this refreshing and entertaining retelling of the Robin Hood legend, Kaufman upends the image of the noble protector of the poor in favor of a more medieval Hood: a violent, opportunistic trickster whose image was polished centuries later by Henry VIII into the romantic hero we admire today. Hood’s adventures in this retelling take place during the reign of Edward I (rather than that of Richard the Lionhearted), and are narrated from the point of view of Jane Crowe, a resourceful peasant just trying to make a living in rural 13th-century Nottinghamshire.
Recruited by her good-natured lover, a local groom, and bored with her own hardscrabble life, Jane agrees to participate in Robin and his Merry Men’s harassment of the Shire-Reeve (the original term for Sheriff) of Nottingham, Sir Walter. She quickly becomes fascinated with the charismatic but dangerous outlaw and is promoted to a kitchen assistant in a noble house, where she spies for Hood and becomes embroiled in his increasingly violent plots.
Kaufman does an admirable job of evoking everyday early-medieval manor life and makes Jane a compelling and likeable character who struggles to resist the outlaw she knows to be narcissistic and manipulative, but who also offers her a chance to right the wrongs perpetrated on commoners by the aristocrats of the time. Intelligent and empathetic, Jane finds unlikely allies among the aristocrats she has been told to hate; as she learns more about them, she begins to resist Hood’s malign influence and discovers that the romantic world of legend, with its clear heroes and villains, is neither as simple nor as interesting as the real world she inhabits.
