Hugh Walpole

Fortitude Hugh Walpole

It is the 1870s. Peter Westcott is growing up in Cornwall, in a Gothic mansion called the House of Scaw, in a village called Treliss. He is tested by one personal catastrophe after another. His father beats him regularly and refuses to allow him to see his bedridden mother. He is sent away to a brutal school, where his defense of a small boy and his resistance to institutional violence lose the school an important rugby match. By reporting a violent bully to the headmaster Peter ensures that the bully is expelled, but the team loses the game because the bully is their best player. When Peter leaves school to come home, he realizes with cold horror that his cackling grandfather and demonic father are waiting eagerly for him to fall into their violent and cruel ways.