Crispin: The Cross of Lead

“Asta’s son” is all he’s ever been called. The lack of name is appro­pri­ate, because he and his moth­er are but poor peas­ants in four­teenth-cen­tu­ry medieval Eng­land. But this thir­teen-year-old boy who thought he had lit­tle to lose soon finds him­self with even less—no home, fam­i­ly, or possessions.

Accused of a crime he did not com­mit, he has been declared a “wolf’s head.” That means he may be killed on sight, by any­one. If he wish­es to remain alive, he must flee his tiny vil­lage. All the boy takes with him is a new­ly revealed name—Crispin—and his mother’s cross of lead.

His jour­ney through the Eng­lish coun­try­side is amaz­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing. Espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult is his encounter with the jug­gler named Bear. A huge, and pos­si­bly even mad, man, Bear forces the boy to become his ser­vant. Bear, how­ev­er, is a strange mas­ter, for he encour­ages Crispin to think for him­self. Though Bear promis­es to pro­tect Crispin, the boy is being relent­less­ly pur­sued. Why are his ene­mies so deter­mined to kill him?

Crispin is grad­u­al­ly drawn right into his ene­mies’ fortress where—in a riv­et­ing climax—he must become a dif­fer­ent per­son if he is to save Bear’s life and his own. He dis­cov­ers that by los­ing every­thing, he has gained the most pre­cious gift of all: a true sense of self.

A mas­ter of breath­tak­ing plot twists and vivid char­ac­ters, Avi brings the full force of his sto­ry­telling pow­ers to the world of medieval England.