This adventure novel is set in fifteenth-century England during the Wars of the Roses. Young Richard Shelton, a ward in a troubled household, finds himself caught between rival noble factions while a mysterious outlaw band, whose signal is a black arrow, strikes at corrupt men in the district.
Richard must decide where his loyalties lie and uncover the truth about his guardian and his father's fate. Along the way he meets the spirited Joanna Sedley. A tale of ambush, forest hiding places and civil war, it is lighter and more romantic than Stevenson's best-known work, but full of pace.