The Sherwood Ring

I got this off a Book Riot list of “unusual historical romance” when I was searching for recommendations for a friend. I was so excited when she asked for romance recommendations, and then she said her preference was historical romance set in America, which ruled out just about all my recommendation arsenal.
Anywayyy, this looked good, and I wanted it for myself. The library didn’t have it and it wasn’t available on kindle, so I bought myself an honest-to-goodness print copy. “Get out the reading lamps and bookmarks, sister! We’re doing this old school!” I said to myself.
This book doesn’t have just one romance, it has three! With a book that has fewer than 300 pages, you might guess there’s a bit of love at first show more sight going on, and you would be guessing correctly two out of three times. Eh, it didn’t bother me, since the writing was good, and the stories were told in such a fun way.
The book shifts back and forth in time as friendly ghosts tell the main character, Peggy, about their lives during the American Revolution. Each character’s story has action, romance, and humor, and it never bothered me to switch gears and go back in time with them. The book spends more time in past, during the American Revolution, than in Peggy’s time (I’m guessing the 50’s, when the book was written).
It’s a gentle book—the American colonel and the British captain who are matching wits throughout the book respect each other, and their drive is to stop and capture rather than wipe each other out. It was a nice break from the gritty and the grim, and the main female characters were all smart and resourceful. My favorite story was Barbara’s—I loved how she outmaneuvered Peaceable, and how it prompted his marriage proposal
This felt like very tame YA to me. With all the love stuff, I don’t know if a younger audience would be interested. Maybe they would? I wouldn’t call it a kissing book. It’s more of a let’s-jump-right-to-a-marriage-proposal book. Whatever it is, I recommend it regardless of your age. It was a quick, comforting read for me in a time when that’s just what I needed. show less

This book is crippled by its structure. This should have been a historical romance, served straight up. Instead, it's a convoluted tale of a bland, lonely, 1950s girl visited by four 18th century ghosts who tell their stories one by one, each in indistinguishable first person voices. With one exception, once a ghost appears, he is never seen again, which makes it hard to grow very attached to any of the characters, no matter how interesting his or her tale. Oddly, so little of the book takes place in the modern setting that bland-lonely-girl never gets to be anything else. She's just our access point to the good stuff, really.

In fact, only three of the six main characters, and only one of the three romances in this story interested me. show more Barbara and Peaceable were WONDERFUL. Pat and Peggy's story I loathed, as it rather soured the reading experience for me. This "modern" couple was not only uninteresting, but offensive in its sad, dated way. Peggy has spent her whole life being dismissed and neglected by the men in her family only to end up engaged to a broke earl who tells her she's stupid at least twice, then promises her a future of miserable sock-darning? Jeez, way to end on a romantic note!

Peaceable alone makes this a worthwhile read, but you're better off starting with The Perilous Gard if you want to see what this author is capable of. show less

After Peggy Grahame is orphaned, she goes to live with her cantankerous old uncle in their even older family home in up state New York. He stays shut up in his study every day, so Peggy is free to explore the house and talk to ghosts. Each of them tells her another installment of the tale of her ancestor Nick Grahame's game of cat and mouse with loyalist Peaceable Sherwood. After numerous triumphs and reverses, they grow to respect each other, but they are still on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War. Peggy is fascinated by this tale, and wonders if it might provide some clue about why her uncle is unwilling to share his papers with a visiting British history student.

The characters in the past are fantastic, each more clever than show more the last. Peacable Sherwood is a delight, an eighteenth century Lord Peter Wimsey who says things like "Will you mind very much if I run myself into serious difficulties now and again after we are married, just for the pleasure of seeing you rise to the occasion?" I loved reading about how each outwitted the other, and the relationships between Peacable and the Grahames are wonderfully complicated. Peggy and her love interest are less enticing, mostly because their romance comes out of nowhere. They meet three times, each for about five minutes, never have a substantive conversation, and on their third meeting he says something along the lines of, "I'm telling you now that we're going to get married, so you'll have time to get used to the idea." What a fantastic idea! I mean, Peggy is seventeen, lost her father about a month ago, has interacted with him for about fifteen minutes total, and doesn't even know his full name, why wouldn't she want to marry him? Pat sweetens the deal by mentioning that he's an earl, but an impoverished one, so she'll spend her days darning his socks before the fire. No sane woman in the world would be able to withstand such coaxing! What people in the 1950s considered romance was wild, man. show less

The Sherwood Ring is the story of Peggy Grahame whose roving artist father suddenly dies and leaves her orphaned at age seventeen. Peggy is sent to her uncle Enos who lives on the family estate "Rest-and-Be-Thankful," ancestral home of the Grahames since the Colonial War in America. Uncle Enos is obsessed with the family history... the family has two beds that George Washington slept in, a silver punch basin made by Paul Revere, etc. And Rest-and-Be-Thankful has its share of family ghosts, as Peggy soon learns. Colorful relatives from the Grahame family tree appear to Peggy and tell her their stories, always in a way that brings light to something Peggy is dealing with. For the family home has its secrets, and Uncle Enos acts very show more strangely, especially regarding the young man Pat who gave Peggy a lift to Rest-and-Be-Thankful when she first arrived. Uncle Enos orders him out of the house and forbids Peggy to have anything to do with him... but Pat is just a scholar looking for material related to his own ancestors who fought in the War for Independence. Or is he?

Pope introduces a cast of fascinating characters in the family ghosts. They recount their stories to lonely Peggy, and Pope skillfully weaves the past with the present through their tales. History is not dry or dull, but full of real people who lived and triumphed and failed and loved just as we do. And Peggy is able to learn from the lessons they teach. When Uncle Enos falls ill, Peggy must search the house to find the secret that is weighing on his conscience. Together she and Pat discover the secret — and something else besides.

Pope's writing is wonderful, descriptive without feeling heavy, and very straightforward. Her dialogue is wonderful and parts of it are still ringing in my head. Her characters are simply wonderful and the way she interwove history with the present made me wish the book would never end. This is a new favorite of mine and is quite as good as the author's Newbery Honor book, The Perilous Gard. If I were to classify it, I'd have to call it historical fantasy. Highly recommended! show less

I discovered today that my library has recently weeded alllllll of the old-but-good YA/MG fiction that has not won an award of some sort... and I'm depressed. Not that I don't think modern contributions can be just as good but, well, it's just one of the reasons I deplore the modern need to cater to modern audiences. Aren't libraries supposed to be guardians of the written art? But, like the stained glass of a medieval battlefield that was recently replaced by a huge, garishly plastic astronaut in that building, libraries have become bookstores, in a sense--- valuable only for the amount of people they can get through their doors instead of the amount of quality info and art that they contain.

Now, after that digression, I must say that show more this is not as good as Pope's other novel, but still stellar work. Peggy, sent to live with her stuffy uncle, is visited by four of the family ghosts that may, or may not, have some connection to to young phd candidate who is trying to figure out some mysteries in the local history.

I love the way it encourages looking at other points of view, of finding common ground and living with differences. And I like how Peggy grows. I get the sense that there was much more happening between chapters than we are told and that bothers me. But, for an author like Pope, I am willing to overlook almost anything. And that paragraph from Pat on the last page hit home for me and erased all my quibbles about Peggy being a bit of a doormat. It sums it up and explains her issues and her potential for non-doormatness so rightly. And I love Pat for seeing those facts so clearly for her. show less

5/24/25: alright gang lmao I did not realize I'd read this twice before today. and literally half a year later is kind of wild I don't do that anymore covid year was something
this is a lighthearted novel and I like it but I also just don't care all that much about Peggy and Pat Thorne I'm here for the Peaceable Drummond plotline kind of a huge fan of his character!! what is this character trope? Scarlet Pimpernel moment surely. and Barbara Grahame !! favorite story is the wine glasses lmaooo lots of fun
Pope clearly had a thing abt guys who get what they want (hello Christopher Heron too) and to an extent it's funny but to another extent I'm not a fan of it ik the thing is that Peggy and Pat mirror Barbara and Peaceable's romance show more obviously but for whatever reason I can stand the one and not the other (character tropes).

crazy that Pope wrote only two novels and both were bangers
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sometime in 2020 (idk if this was april or october): genuinely one of the better novels I've read recently lol show less

I absolutely loved this book!! Even though I had library books waiting to be read, when this came from Amazon, I absconded with it immediately and stayed up far too late reading it cover to cover. The story takes place in two different time periods: in the late 19th/early 20th century, Peggy Grahame goes to live with her reclusive uncle on his ancestral estate. Isolated and lonely, she takes to exploring the manor and soon encounters the family ghosts. Some of her ancestors were extremely involved with the American Revolution, including Barbara Grahame, a former tenant of the house; Richard Grahame, her brother and a soldier in the Continental Army; Eleanor Shipley, a young woman from a neighboring house; and Peaceable Sherwood, a show more loyalist ringleader who makes a lot of trouble for the Grahame family. Each of these ghosts tells his/her own part of the story, and it makes for enthralling, Scarlet Pimpernel-esque reading. Peaceable Sherwood even reminded me of Percy Blakeney in some ways. In short, this is a great read combining history, espionage, and romance. I'd recommend it to anyone! show less