Kidnapped

Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a boys' novel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May-July 1886. The novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hilary Mantel. A sequel, Catriona, was published in 1893.

    The narrative is written in English with some dialogue in Lowland Scots, a Germanic language that evolved from an earlier incarnation of English.

    Kidnapped is set around real 18th Century Scottish events, notably the "Appin murder", which occurred in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters are real people, including one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart. The political situation of the time is portrayed from multiple viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.

    Just for fun, because I'm a nerd like this, the full title of the book is Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Even though this novel was supposedly written for young readers, I believe it would be a very difficult read for most adults. Unless, of course, the adult is an avid reader and also loves Stevenson's other novels. The suspense and adventure is high in this novel, which definitely make it a worthwhile venture, but the references to Scottish history and the Scottish dialects and word choices will really temper a casual reader. The adventures our young main character has throughout the novel are comforting and entertaining, especially since you know he's telling the story so he must have survived the perils on every page. Once you get deeper into the novel, the language tends to become second nature, at least it did for me (such as when reading the difficult dialects of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and the novel's enjoyment simply outweighs the difficulties.