Coachman by Sue Millard

Nowadays we slide behind our car’s steering wheel, or maybe into our usual seat on the commuter train, or an aisle seat on the airplane, and we can hardly dream of the coaches that were the heartbeat of travel in England two centuries ago. Coachman puts us squarely into early Victorian times, as George Davenport hops up on the box and sets off his four-in-hand team to thunder along the mail route. George cuts a dashing figure as a handsome, well-dressed young man who moves among gentry and stable lads alike. One of the ‘Knights of the road’ of the early nineteenth century. Well-placed trade and period colloquialisms give us the ‘gigs and phaetons’ over the ‘cobbles,’ the ‘off-wheeler’ and the ‘brake-shoe,’ let us observe men ‘foxed’ with drink, and feel the heat of ‘touching a Lucifer to the kindling.’

George is a proud Coachman who faces the end of an era as railroad travel emerges. He is initially fortunate to get on with William Chaplin, the titan of coaching and a real historical figure, in London, allowing him to make plans to move his wife-to-be and unborn child down from Cumberland. But challenges beset him, in the form of the precipitously fast demise of the coaching trade, and the unwanted attentions of Mr. Chaplin’s sexually-curious daughter. George’s world is vivid: the underbelly of hand-to-mouth existence for commoners of the time is not spared, the pageantry of the Mail Coach Procession, and the refinement of the theater. In the end, George must decide how far he will go to hold the power of a four-in-hand team in his gloved hand.

Sue Millard’s web site, Jackdaw E Books