Kate has been blamed for something Alicia has done (which is par for the course) and is exiled even further away, to the northernmost parts of England. Queen Mary is on the throne, and Lady Elizabeth (later to be Queen Elizabeth I) is exiled to a drafty English manor house with a few ladies in waiting, including Kate, who is intelligent and awkward, and her lovely but airheaded younger sister Alicia. In this 1974 Newbery Honor book, the Fairy Folk are an ancient and mysterious Druid-like people living in caves deep under the earth, and they are determined to make a human sacrifice on All Hallows Eve. (It also, by the way, leaves out the racier aspects of the Tam Lin story - the woman who saves her lover from the fairy queen is pregnant with his child- so this one's safe for the younger crowd, but still complex and intriguing enough for adult fantasy readers.) Well, The Perilous Gard is for readers who prefer a more traditional retelling of Tam Lin. I frequently sing the praises of Pamela Dean's version of Tam Lin, while knowing full well that that novel will only appeal to a limited subset of the fraction of readers who like fairy tale novelizations. Of the several Tam Lin retellings I've read, the classic YA novel The Perilous Gard is a standout.
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