A Season Most Unfair

The only child of a chandler in medieval St Neots, Scholastica, known as Tick, has always enjoyed candle-making. Time spent in comfortable conversation with her beloved father and a yearly visit to the merry Stourbridge Fair help make up for the pungent work of rendering tallow. Tick is especially excited for this year’s work: because of her papa’s increasingly blurry sight, Tick believes she will be allowed to make the delicately painted beeswax Agnus Dei charms that bring in the most money. But Tick is outraged when a tanner’s young son, Henry of Holgate, arrives, having been invited to apprentice to her father. She’s also wounded that Papa seems to be pulling away from her—no doubt because she’s becoming “young-womanly,” something she’s noticed has caused distance between her friends and their fathers. Henry’s initially shoddy workmanship alarms Tick, and fearing that profits will suffer because of it, she heads to the fair with her own wares, aiming to prove how much her papa needs her. Coats (The Night Ride) deftly layers headstrong Tick’s efforts to remain close to her papa, and her annoyance with traditional gender roles, in a feminist tale with a persuasively rendered historical setting. Characters read as white. Ages 10–up. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary. (June)