With her father and brother mysteriously absent from home, Sovay must prove that they are not guilty of treason. Needless to say, they do not part on the best of terms. Instead of begging her forgiveness, James accuses her father of being a traitor to the king. Eventually, Sovay confronts James with the evidence of his betrayal. Her fiancé, James Gilmore, has betrayed her with a chamber maid, and she decides to find out if he really loves her by disguising herself as the highwayman Captain Blaze. Our heroine, the seventeen-year-old daughter of an aristocrat in late 18th-century England, is the beautiful but willful Sovay Middleton. The elements of the story are recognizable, but there is a definite Rees twist to the story of Sovay as told in the traditional ballad about a young lady dressed “in man’s array/with a brace of pistols all by her side.” As usual, the writer chooses to tackle female stereotypes and turn them upside-down. This time, Rees examines the story of Sovay, a female highwayman. Readers familiar with Celia Rees’s Pirates! will be happy to hear that she has tackled yet another historical subject in her latest novel, Sovay.
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