Written by a contemporary of Dickens, and a favorite of mine since I was a teen.  Ah, so romantic, and sometimes disarmingly funny too.  So let me set it up for you.  Set in Exmoor during the mid-1600s, young local wrestling champion John Ridd is Gaston, except make him responsible, kind, and with a rather snarky sense of humor, running the family’s large landholding, and caring for his widowed mother and two younger sisters.  Man has his hands full. In an isolated valley, not far […]