Rider on a White Horse [Hardcover]

Rosemary Sutcliff (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Putnam Pub Group (T); 1St Edition edition (June 1959)
• ISBN-10: 9997409175
• ISBN-13: 978-9997409171
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,744,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote more than 40 historical novels for young adults-including The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, The Sword and the Circle, and Black Ships Before Troy-five adult novels, and several books of nonfiction.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rider on a White Horse, June 23, 2003

By 

K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rider on a White Horse (Hardcover)

Lady Anne Fairfax and her husband Thomas strive to keep body and soul alive during the brutal English Civil War.

Rosemary Sutcliff writes beautifully on a sentence level, and so she gets away with things in this historical novel that most writers couldn't. It's a deeply romanticized account (written, after all, in 1959), and it largely avoids any discussion of the real issues of the war. In particular, I found the author's admiring portrayal of Cromwell off-putting. Though small-scale action scenes work well, in larger battles the author seems to lose control of her material, retreating into descriptions of maneuvers that may as well have been copied from a rather dry textbook rather than giving the reader a vivid story.

Having said all that, the characters are appealing and there are some lovely images. This book strikes me as a foundation, and I hope more modern writers have gone further with the subject matter.