A Place Called Freedom by Ken Follett

I am trying to pen down excerpts from some of my favourite books and this is a little from the book by Ken Follett -- A Place Called Freedom. I hope this would encourage you to explore a copy of this book.

A Place Called Freedom

Snow crowned the ridges of High Glen and lay on the wooded slopes in pearly patches, like jewellery on the bosom of a green silk dress. In the valley bottom a hasty stream dodged between icy rocks. The bitter wind that howled inland from the North Sea brought flurries of sleet and hail. Walking to church in the morning the McAsh twins, Malachi and Esther, followed a zigzag trail along the eastern slope of the glen. Malachi, known as Mack, wore a plaid cape and tweed breeches, but his legs were bare below the knee, and his feet, without stockings, froze in his wooden clogs. However, he was young and hot-blooded, and he hardly noticed the cold. This was not the shortest way to church but High Glen always thrilled him. The high mountainsides, the quiet mysterious woods and the laughing water formed a landscape familiar to his soul. He had watched a pair of eagles raise three sets of nestlings here. Like the eagles, he had stolen the laird’s salmon from the teeming stream. And, like the deer, he had hidden in the trees, silent and still, when the gamekeepers came. The laird was a woman, Lady Hallim, a widow with a daughter. The land on the far side of the mountain belonged to Sir George Jamisson, and it was a different world. Engineers had torn great holes in the mountainsides; man-made hills of slag disfigured the valley; massive wagons loaded with coal ploughed the muddy road; and the stream was black with dust. There the twins lived, in a village called Heugh, a long row of low stone houses marching uphill like a staircase.

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The estate workers and the crofters took Mother’s view. They said the king was appointed by God, and that was why people had to obey him. The coal miners had heard newer ideas. John Locke and other philosophers said a government’s authority could come only from the consent of the people. This theory appealed to Mack.

Few miners in Heugh could read, but Mack’s mother could, and he had pestered her to teach him. She had taught both her children, ignoring the jibes of her husband, who said she had ideas above her station. At Mrs Wheighel’s Mack was called on to read aloud from The Times,the Edinburgh Advertiser, and political journals such as the radical North Briton. The papers were always weeks out of date, sometimes months, but the men and women of the village listened avidly to long speeches reported verbatim, satirical diatribes, and accounts of strikes, protests and riots.
It was after a Saturday-night argument at Mrs Wheighel’s that Mack had written the letter.

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The reply had come yesterday, and it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Mack. It would change his life beyond recognition, he thought. It might set him free….