Among the Barons

Among the Barons is a novel by the American writer Margaret Peterson Haddix, published in 2003 and the fourth of the seven Shadow Children books.

Living as somebody else is the theme of this volume, and the story gets its unease from the ordinary details of that arrangement: Luke has to remember which memories belong to him, he cannot tell his closest friends who he is, and the boy whose name he borrowed turns out to have a family who are still grieving and who assume that everything he does is a way of honouring their son. Smithfield is younger than Luke, upset and careless, and he sets off the series of events that ends with a fire and an investigation, which is how Luke learns that the family is involved in more than it has admitted. The school, the visiting families and the bodyguard assigned to a boy who does not trust him give the book the feeling of a world in which every arrangement is somebody's bargain. Haddix keeps the politics present without letting them dominate, and the novel is as much about a friendship that cannot be honest as about the population law. The series continued with Among the Enemy.