Just David

Just David is a children's novel by the American writer Eleanor H. Porter, published in 1916.

David is a ten-year-old boy who plays the violin and cannot give anyone his last name, because his father never told him one. The two of them live an idyllic life high in the mountains until the father becomes gravely ill and they are forced down into the valley, where they spend a night in a barn and the father dies. Before he does, he gives David a large quantity of gold coins and tells him to hide them until they are needed.

David plays his violin beside his father's body and is discovered there by Simeon Holly and his wife, who realise the man is dead and then find they cannot learn anything about the boy from the boy himself. They take him in, and the novel follows what a child raised away from other people does when he is put among them, and how much the villagers and his adoptive parents change in response. It was popular enough to be transcribed into Braille in 1922 and was translated into Chinese, Russian, Italian and Vietnamese over the following century.