The Woodcutter of Gutech

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About this book

Lost in the Black Forest with a heavy pack of books, Gottlieb Spena follows the sound of an axe to a woodcutter and his grandson. Nicholas Moretz offers the traveller shelter at the cottage he shares with Karl and Meta. Over supper, Spena explains his work selling religious books, and the family's wish to read them turns a chance meeting into a conversation about faith.

William Henry Giles Kingston writes for young readers about a household caught in the religious struggles of the Reformation. The forest setting gives way to harsher circumstances when Moretz is imprisoned and his grandchildren receive a demand to leave their home. Spena returns with sympathy and a plan to seek their grandfather's release. Told from a Protestant perspective, the story links reading and religious conviction with practical acts of kindness. Its cottage meals, woodland labour and family concerns make those conflicts part of ordinary daily life.