Ballad of Favour

The Messenger

by Monica Dickens, Glynis Overton

It is late September and, with the summer season ending, the life at the Wood Briar Hotel slows down. Rose Wood goes back to school, but she still helps with running of the hotel on the weekends, when those seeking a break from the city life visit her parents' country guesthouse. Rose misses the summer buzz and her freedom from school, and with several weeks passing by quietly since her last magical adventure with the Great Gray Horse she worries that her mission as the messenger of this ancient, brave horse is over.But when the mysterious composer, Mr Vingo, returns to the hotel, Favour, the Great Gray Horse reappears and Rose is summoned for another mission. This time she travels to an abandoned house in a town nearby where a forlorn family tries to survive their hardships. Will Rose and the horse be able to help them? Will Rose resist the temptation to share her secret with her friends, Abigail and Ben? She can only stay the messenger of the horse if she is brave and works undiscovered... But as Rose's supernatural mission becomes more challenging and scary, her everyday life in the Wood Briar Hotel becomes also more complicated. She does not seem to get along with her father anymore and, with a big wedding party coming up, the Wood family must work in unison.The "Ballad of Favour," first published in 1985, is the second book in the four-part fantasy adventure about Rose and the magical Great Grey Horse. Here, Monica Dickens reveals another thread of the exciting legend of the cruel Lord of the Moor, alongside Rose's mission to protect innocent people from misery; but she also explores, with delicacy and a sense of humor, problems experienced by early teens on their way to adulthood.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

From the publisher: MONICA DICKENS, born in 1915, was brought up in London and was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Her mother's German origins and her Catholicism gave her the detached eye of an outsider; at St Paul's Girls' School she was under occupied and rebellious. After drama school she was a debutante before working as a cook. One Pair of Hands (1939), her first book, described life in the kitchens of Kensington. It was the first of a group of semi autobiographies of which Mariana (1940), technically a novel, was one. 'My aim is to entertain rather than instruct,' she wrote. 'I want readers to recognise life in my books.' In 1951 Monica Dickens married a US naval officer, Roy Stratton, moved to America and adopted two daughters. An extremely popular writer, she involved herself in, and wrote about, good causes such as the Samaritans. After her husband died she lived in a cottage in rural Berkshire, dying there in 1992.
http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/page...

Reviews

[Alayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have usually enjoyed Monica Dickens' books in the past, including her Young Adult ones (Follyfoot Farm), but this one was not as well written as the others. I felt like I didn't know what was happening at times, because I had not read the first in the series (this is the second).