Kidnapped

Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson.

The novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Seamus Heaney.

It is set around 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin Murder", which occurred near Ballachulish in 1752 in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising.

The political situation of the time is portrayed from different viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.

The central character and narrator is a young man named David Balfour, young and naive but resourceful, whose parents have recently died and who is out to make his way in the world.

He is given a letter by the minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond, where David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives.

On his journey, David asks many people where the House of Shaws is, and all of them speak of it darkly as a place of fear and evil.