A Boy Knight

Late November. Early snow. Three boys walk down Park Avenue toward Regal High, and an old man steps from the shadows asking for food. None of them have money. They pass on. But one of them, Frank Mulvy, carries his lunch in his pocket and feels the weight of what he couldn't do. So begins Martin J. Scott's earnest tale of a boy finding his moral compass in the early twentieth century.A Boy Knight follows Frank Mulvy, secretary of a boys' club, as he navigates the difficult arithmetic of childhood: friendship versus loyalty, courage versus consequence. The central tension comes in the form of Bill Daly, a bully whose cruelty masks something deeper, and Father Boone, the kind-hearted priest who sees potential in all of them. This is a story about what it means to stand for something when standing costs you.This is historical children's fiction in its purest, most unpretentious form. It wears its moral heart on its sleeve without apology. For readers who treasure the vanished world of early American urban life, who find warmth in stories of immigrant neighborhoods and parish priests and boys learning, slowly, what it means to be good, this small novel holds quiet rewards. It asks no more of you than to believe in the possibility of a boy becoming something better.