Jim Davis: High-Sea Adventure

If you like Robert Louis Stevenson, you will thoroughly enjoy Masefield's Jim Davis. I first read this at age 14 (with some vocab help from dear old dad) and it remains one of the best books I have read in a long while. Being a history major and an english minor I found the prose of this book delightful and the historical significance astounding. If you are an adult who has read and re-read Stevenson too much and want the same genre but a different author/plot Jim Davis is the novel for you. If you have a child whom you wish to turn onto fine literature Jim Davis will grab your child's imagination and illustrate a grand adventure of pirates, smugglers, soldiers and gypsies for it. Any child (old or young) can relate to the stories narrator, this is a jewel of English literature. Another great Stevenson alternate is J. Meade Falkner's Moonfleet, it is a bit of an easier read than Jim Davis, but contains just as much adventure.

This story is set in early 19th century Devon, during the Napoleonic Wars. The narrator is a boy in his early teens, who by chance and high spirits falls in with a gang of smugglers bringing contraband by sea from France to England. It's a fast-moving story, in the tradition of R. L. Stevenson, and a good look at the history of the period along England's south coast too.

It is appropriate for anyone who loves action and adventure