Robert Falconer

Perhaps MacDonald's most well-known novel and life story of his most memorable character. The character of "Robert Falconer" had been with MacDonald a long time, first from the unpublished Seekers and Finders (1859-60), then appearing briefly in David Elginbrod, and later in a much abbreviated story serialized in 1866-67 called "The History of Robert Falconer." Now at last Falconer's full story came to light. Robert Falconer, like Alec Forbes of Howglen, is a highly autobiographical work, with this difference, that in the character of young Robert Falconer the reader gains a rare glimpse into MacDonald's own boyhood, with his internal struggles, his relationship with his grandmother (who largely raised him after the death of his mother) and his spiritual search as a young man attempting to discover God's love amid the hellfire Calvinism of his upbringing. Robert Falconer's resolution of this conflict is a wonderful window into the roots and development of MacDonald's own faith which would turn generations to come toward the Fatherhood of a loving God.