Adam of the Road exemplifies good historical fiction. Gray's talent as a storyteller lies in her ability to recreate this period of English history and give it life and color. Her hundreds of carefully chosen details express perfectly the atmosphere and flavor of thirteenth-century Britain. Although her attention to authenticity is evident, she smoothly incorporates her research into the story.

Imagery is vital to Gray's style. Details of every setting—the furnishings of an inn, the costumes in a miracle play, the hues of a village street—make the events of the novel more plausible. Gray stimulates not only the reader's visual sense but all four other senses as well with her evocations of the smell of honeysuckle and old musty houses, the sounds of street peddlers and singing birds, the taste of a fattened goose and spiced wine, and the feel of cool...