Routine Romance Follett’s Novel About Scottish Miner Rides Along On Author’s Skill, Not On Story’s Excitement
“A Place Called Freedom”
By Ken Follett (Crown, $25, 416 pages)
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Malachi McAsh, the hero of Ken Follett’s new epic is in for a tough time.
There he is in an 18th-century Scottish coal mine, dreaming of freedom, battling injustice, inspiring his fellow workers and infuriating his betters. You just know those nasty rich folks are going to make life pretty uncomfortable for fearless Mack, especially after the not-so-humble coal miner reads a letter in church from a radical London lawyer informing the poor, wee folks that the long-accepted custom of being pledged at birth by their parents doesn’t have to mean a life of slavery.
What Mack has discovered is that the miners have the option at the age of 21 to choose freedom. But if they work another year and a day for the owners, they are enslaved for life. The newfound knowledge comes too late to help anyone but Mack, who speedily declares his emancipation.
As always, there is a spirited woman in the background to warm the cockles of the hero’s heart and fill his dreams. This time it is Lizzie Hallim, poor but proud, and heir to a nice chunk of land, which could prove profitable if it was joined to the land being mined by the ruthless, money-grubbing Jamisson family.
The plan is to marry Lizzie off to the older son and heir, Robert, a pretty cold fish who can think of little but money and his dislike for his younger brother, Jay. He has a point there because Jay is nothing but a mama’s boy, with a gambling streak and more than a touch of cruelty to his nature. In a moment of insanity, Lizzie opts for Jay.
Meanwhile, Mack has gone to London, been double-crossed, branded a troublemaker and ordered shipped to the Colonies to work as convict labor on a Virginia tobacco plantation.
Then surprise, surprise, who should be on the ship taking brave Mack to the New World? None other than Lizzie and her new husband, who just happens to own the plantation where Mack will be toiling in the sun.
Fortunately, Follett can tell a story, which saves “A Place Called Freedom” from being just another run-of-the-mill 18th-century romance. He really evokes the feeling of coal dust choking the miners’ lungs as they toil away in the Scottish mines. You can feel the pain of the young children working 15-hour days carrying back-breaking loads up to the pit face. There is no mistaking the despair of a people sentenced to a lifetime of misery.
The trouble is the main players. They are such a predictable lot that there are no surprises. You know all along that Mack and Lizzie are destined for one another; that the villainous Jamissons will get their comeuppance and that America will prove to be the golden land of opportunity. And “A Place Called Freedom” will make it onto the best-seller lists.