The White Feather

At Wrykyn, one wrong moment can undo a boy. When Sheen backs away from a brawl between the school and the local town, his housemates decide he is a coward and freeze him out completely. Stung, he sets about earning back their respect the hard way, training in secret with Joe Bevan, a professional boxer, and fixing his sights on the public schools boxing tournament. Wodehouse takes the schoolboy code of nerve and honor seriously here, and the result is a quieter, more earnest book than his farces, built around the slow and painful business of proving yourself. The fight scenes carry real tension. Available free as a PDF and EPUB edition.