Blackthorn Winter is a 2003 novel by Douglas Wilson, his first work of fiction for children.Veritas Press listing Set during the reign of the Good Queen Anne, Blackthorn Winter tells the story of the young Thomas Ingle's adventures at sea.
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Like Robert Louis Stevenson's classic pirate story, Treasure Island, Blackthorn Winter is often assigned reading for school children, particularly in Classical Christian Schools.For example: Providence Classical Christian School's or Northside Academy's The book is also included in curricula used by home educators. While Treasure Island is typically read in junior high schools, Blackthorn Winter is more commonly assigned to younger readers.
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Critical reception for Blackthorn Winter has been mixed to positive, and the book received reviews from the School Library Journal and Horn Book Guide. Kliatt gave Blackthorn Winter a positive review, stating that "YAs who like mysteries in atmospheric settings will enjoy this one." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books gave a more mixed review, as they felt that the book had too many elements at play that made what was an otherwise enjoyable read sluggish at points.
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Wilson followed Blackthorn Winter with Susan Creek in 2004. The second book's adventures are those of Captain Morgan's grandson John Monroe who inadvertently discovers a British officer spying for the French. This story is set in the 1740s and includes several encounters with George Whitefield, the famed Great Awakening preacher .
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The four Ice Saints The Ice Saints are St. Mamertus (or, in some countries, St. Boniface of Tarsus), St. Pancras, and St. Servatius. They are so named because their feast days fall on the days of May 11, May 12, and May 13 respectively, known as "the blackthorn winter" in Austrian, Belgian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, North-Italian, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Swiss folklore.
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Morton is the area of Brading to the south where Morton Marshes and the River Yar separate Brading from the extension of housing estates from the larger town of Sandown. It is distinguished by the hawthorn hedges which bloom with white flowers and are said to signify an unseasonal cold spell, termed a "Blackthorn Winter" in local weather lore. It is the site of some Roman remains.
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She has written several mystery books in the American Girl series as well as Blackthorn Winter (2006) and Murder at Heatherstone Hall (2015), murder mystery novels set in England. Time Windows was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Books for Young Adults, received YALSA's "Popular Paperback for Young Adults" award and the State of Maryland's "Blackeyed Susan Young Reader Medal." Dreadful Sorry, also a YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults, was a featured selection of the Junior Library Guild and was named "Pick of the Crop" in The School Library Journal starred review. Pale Phoenix and Paperquake were nominated for the Mystery Writers of America's prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award for juvenile mystery fiction, and Paperquake additionally was named one of YALSA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults.
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Despite never achieving the success of her literary brothers she wrote at least two novels at Chydyok, The Tragedy of Budvale and Joan Callais, as well as a play, The Quick and the Dead, but only the first of these has been published. Subsequent novels included The Path of the Gale and Further West, but these too never saw the light of day. In 1930, she had a collection of poems published titled Driftwood, and three short pamphlets of poems appeared thereafter (many of them republished in 1992 in Driftwood and Other Poems). That year also saw her only success as a novelist with The Blackthorn Winter, published by Constable in London and by Richard R. Smith in New York, and to be reissued for the first time in late January 2007 by The Sundial Press.
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