Kidnapped
Classic Fiction · No. 26 — A stolen inheritance and a friendship tested across the Scottish Highlands.
- Classic Fiction
- 29 min
- Ages 12–99
- 6 chapters
About this audiobook
After his father's death, seventeen-year-old David Balfour walks to the decaying House of Shaws and discovers that his miserly uncle Ebenezer has kept an inheritance that should be David's. Ebenezer arranges for Captain Hoseason to kidnap David aboard the Covenant, intending to sell him into servitude overseas. When the ship strikes a smaller boat, the survivor Alan Breck Stewart comes aboard carrying money for the exiled Jacobite cause. David warns Alan of a plot to rob and kill him, and together they defend the roundhouse. The Covenant is wrecked; David reaches the Highlands and reunites with Alan just after the historical Appin Murder, for which Alan and David are blamed without evidence. Pursued by soldiers, they cross islands, mountains, and heather, relying on Highland families while arguing over Jacobite and Whig loyalties. Hunger and exhaustion bring a bitter quarrel, then an honest reconciliation. With the lawyer Rankeillor, David tricks Ebenezer into admitting the kidnapping, secures his inheritance while providing for his uncle, and helps Alan continue toward safety.
Why it's worth a listen
David Balfour goes to claim his inheritance and is sold onto a ship by the uncle who stole it. Shipwreck casts him into the Highlands beside Alan Breck Stewart, a wanted Jacobite with courage, vanity, humor, and a view of Scotland almost opposite David's own. Their flight across the heather is both chase and friendship story, asking whether loyalty can survive fierce disagreement about history.
A question to keep
Can friendship survive when two honest people remember history from opposite sides?
Chapters
- The House of Shaws and the Dark Stair
- The Covenant and the Jacobite
- The Roundhouse and the Reef
- The Red Fox and the Flight
- The Heather and the Quarrel
- A Question to Keep