The Scoundrel’s Son by Frederic Fahey

The Scoundrel’s Son by Frederic Fahey is a captivating historical fiction novel that reimagines the life of Tom Canty from Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. In this thoughtful continuation, debut author Frederic Fahey—formerly a medical physicist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School—explores Tom’s journey through the royal court of Edward VI, weaving a rich tale of friendship, loss, identity, and coming of age in Tudor England.

In this interview, Fahey shares the inspiration behind The Scoundrel’s Son, his creative process, and how he brought historical and fictional characters to life, including Lady Jane Grey and a spirited original heroine named Allie. If you’re a fan of Twain, Tudor history, or character-driven storytelling, The Scoundrel’s Son by Frederic Fahey is a must-read.

Transcript of What Happened After The Prince and the Pauper? Author Frederic Fahey on The Scoundrel’s Son

Heather: Hey, friend. Today I have something a little different. I sat down recently with the author Frederic Fahey, who, after an impressive career as a medical physicist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has taken a fascinating turn into the world of historical fiction. His debut novel is The Scoundrel Son, and it picks up where Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper left off—but not in the way that you might expect.

Fred takes us on a journey through the Tudor world, following Tom Canty as he grows up in the royal court, befriends Edward VI, meets Lady Jane Grey, and wrestles with what it means to be a good person in a complicated world.

In this conversation, we talk about what inspired Fred to give Tom his own voice, how he blended fictional and historical characters, and why friendship, loss, and identity are at the heart of this story.

Plus, we get the inside scoop on the incredible book cover, which was designed by the same artist who did the Wicked book cover. So that’s a fun connection. Let’s dive right in and learn more about Edward VI. And if you’re a fan of Mark Twain and The Prince and the Pauper, this is definitely going to be one you’ll want to watch the whole way through. All right, let’s get into it.

So you have this wonderful book. You have the—oh, you should tell me before we even get started—the story behind the cover of your book, because you shared something very interesting about that. The Scoundrel Son. Tell me about this beautiful cover.

Frederic: So, uh, you know, one of the advantages of having gone to a small publisher is they said, “You do the cover.” You know, my writing coach told me she doesn’t even think Stephen King gets to pick what his cover looks like.

So I live on this island off Portland, Maine, called Peaks Island, and there are some very talented illustrators on the island. One happens to be Doug Smith. He lives about maybe three quarters of a mile from me here, and he did the original cover of Wicked. You know, not the Broadway poster, but the actual book cover.

Heather: I can tell that now that you’re saying it. It looks familiar.

Frederic: So he also read my book very carefully, because although I probably had veto power, he chose the six scenes he decided to illustrate. He has on this side of the book cover, part one, it’s a little bit lighter. On this side, part two, it’s a little bit darker. So, yeah. And it was great working with him. And Scott Nash, another illustrator, worked with us. Scott helped design it, and Doug did the illustration.

Heather: Awesome. So your book kind of picks up—or picks off? I would think it’s kind of… it’s not necessarily a sequel to The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, but it’s more of like a companion, I guess you could say. So you pick up the story of Tom Canty from The Prince and the Pauper.

And if people don’t know that story, maybe you can just give me a little… in the first chapter, you give this little synopsis of The Prince and the Pauper, and maybe you can tell me a little bit about the story and how you pick it up. And I’m curious—what was it about Tom Canty’s voice that kept tugging at you and made you want to write this companion? For lack of a better word—I don’t want to call it a sequel because it’s not a sequel so much, but…

Frederic: Yeah. I’m sort of calling it a continuation, in a way. When I was a kid, I saw the Errol Flynn movie version of The Prince and the Pauper, and at the end of it, I said, “Wow, was Edward really a real person?” So I ran to my Collier’s Encyclopedia—20 volumes—and looked it up.

And lo and behold, a lot of people sort of know the story of The Prince and the Pauper, but they don’t realize that the prince is an actual prince. He’s Edward—the real Edward VI, King of England. So that intrigued me.

What Twain says about Tom is that he lived to be an old man, but my encyclopedia said that Edward did not. So I wondered what happened next. Actually, in The Prince and the Pauper—and maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit more later—they don’t spend much time together. They sort of meet, decide they are going to exchange places, and then Edward goes off and has these harrowing adventures in the city, which he thought would be cooler than it actually is.

Tom is in the palace, trying to make people believe he is the prince. And then the king dies, and, well, you know. So I thought, what happens next? And now, many years later, I decided I know what happened next.

The other thing that came into it—which maybe we will talk about later—is that probably about ten or twenty years ago, I visited the Tower of London. The yeoman, the Beefeater giving the tour, talked about Lady Jane Grey. I was intrigued by her and her story, so I thought it would be sort of fun to add a teenage girl to the mix. So I decided to do that. And that is how I got the idea. I wanted to know what happened next.

Heather: Very cool. Yeah. And there’s sort of like a—I do not want to give anything away—but there’s an interesting tension between Tom and Jane Grey. I do not know, he seems to want to impress her. It is almost like a little bit of a love interest, but not really, kind of from afar. It is cool. It is neat to bring that in like that.

So you frame it like a memoir—Tom as a grown man looking back—and I am curious why you framed it that way. What made you decide to have it come from that perspective?

Frederic: You know, partly it was because this is the first novel I ever wrote. After being a scientist for many years, I retired and decided I would try to write a novel. I figured, well, one way to tell a tale is to tell a tale.

So I thought that might be easier. And it is, in some ways, but it is limiting in other ways, right? Because all you know is what Tom knows. It is in retrospect, so I loosened it up a little bit. He is telling it twenty years later.

That is sort of why I chose it. I said, okay, it is going to be in first person. It is going to be a tale told to somebody. And I am not going to do what Twain did. I am not going to try to do my version of Elizabethan English. It is pretty much going to be modern English, because, again, it was my first book and I wanted to make it as easy as I could. But I think it worked well. I mean, I thought that Tom brings a certain perspective to the Royal Court that is unique, and I thought that would be something interesting to see.

Heather: Yeah. Well, congratulations on this first book. It is a marvelous first book. It is a delight to read. I am interested in this friendship between Tom and Edward. Of course, Tom goes off and he is the King’s ward at this point and living his life. How did you envision or decide to depict their friendship as they both grew up and entered adolescence? How did you decide to portray it the way you did?

Frederic: Yeah. You know, one of the themes of the book—or one of the things I wanted to capture—is those friendships we have when we are that age. The story starts when they are about eleven and ends when they are fifteen or sixteen years old. Sometimes, some of the strongest friendships in your life are from that time period.

Like I said, Edward and Tom did not spend much time together in The Prince and the Pauper, so I wanted to expand on that. Were they still friends? Did they still have a relationship? Or did Tom go his way and Edward go his?

Then I thought, Tom brings something unique. Edward is the King of England now, right? So he spends a lot of time with people who are much older than he is. But Tom comes in and he is a kid—he is exactly the same age, to the day, as Edward. So they do little boy things. I have a scene where Tom tells a joke and milk comes out of Edward’s nose—the King of England’s nose.

Heather: Right. I remember you said something like, “Oh, that made milk hit my nose,” or something. It was quite funny.

Frederic: So I was trying to capture that friendship as a very strong part of what I wanted to present here.

Heather: Yeah. From your research and what you learned about Edward as you were researching this book, do you think Edward needed friendships like that? Do you think Edward had any friendships like that?

Frederic: He did, because he was at school, and I do not think he was educated by himself. I think there were others. I cannot remember the name exactly, but there was an Irish kid, for example—something like that. It was not Robert…

Heather: Dudley? I think he was part of Elizabeth’s circle.

Frederic: Yeah, he did know Robert Dudley a little bit, and others in that family. So he did have some friendships. Some of his other cousins too—like Ned Seymour—maybe he knew. But that is still in the realm of either school or being in the royal family.

So he is able to let his guard down more when he is with Tom. And I think that makes it a little easier. On the other hand, as the story progresses and they get a little older, Tom brings a unique perspective to what is going on.

Tom does not have as much formal schooling as Edward or Jane, but he has street smarts that they do not. He is a little bit guarded because he has not had an easy childhood. He knows that there are good people in the world, but he also knows that there are not. And he learns through this story that even if you are a noble or royal, that does not mean you cannot be a scheming person.

Heather: Sure. Yeah. I remember there was a scene where one of his friends—not the noble one—was cheating at cards. Jam was cheating at cards. And there was this awareness in Tom. I thought it was such an interesting dichotomy, playing both sides—the noble side and the street side—and realizing that kind of thing is everywhere and him being more introduced to that early on.

There is this wonderful cast of characters that you have—Father Christian and Robert Hobson. How did you come up with these characters? Did any of them surprise you as you were writing? Did any of them just appear to you? Did they take on bigger roles than you had imagined? Tell me about them.

Frederic: You mentioned Father Christian. That is sort of a funny thing because if you are familiar with The Prince and the Pauper, Tom is friendly with a priest called Father Andrew. So I started writing my first draft with Father Andrew, and then it occurred to me—wait a minute—Father Andrew dies in The Prince and the Pauper. So I had to make a shift.

I think one of the other characters I liked, who had a bigger part than I would have expected, is Richard, the king’s head groom. They sort of bond because Richard knows what Tom brings to the table—both early on and then later, after things evolve. He is an interesting character, and he has a respect for Tom.

Sometimes I had to invent a character like Richard because I had to ask myself, how do you grease the wheels to get Tom into the places where he wants to be? There is another one—William the guard. The guard who roughed him up in The Prince and the Pauper now befriends him. So I liked him too.

Father Christian is a little bit of a spiritual presence. Tom is not really that spiritual, but he listens. And then Robert is more like his mentor. Tom is his apprentice, and that relationship provides a lot of grounding.

And then I dragged Miles Hendon in from The Prince and the Pauper because we needed someone who knows something about covert operations.

Heather: Yeah, for sure. And how did you—like, it is interesting because you brought in—normally with historical fiction, you are bringing in real people with invented characters and mixing things. And then you also have another layer where you are bringing in characters from another historical fiction book from a hundred and something odd years ago, almost 150 years ago.

So how did you mix together all of these characters? What were the challenges with that? And also, bringing in real characters and maintaining historical accuracy while also being faithful to the characters that Mark Twain created? And then putting your own spin on them, and also bringing in the characters that you had to invent as well? Tell me a little bit about how you were able to do that process.

Frederic: You know, I am the person who ripped off Mark Twain and did not win the Pulitzer Prize. So kudos to Percival Everett for James. But it is about—so I followed his approach. And I thought it would be easier. Again, it is my first novel. I had history, I had a scaffold, I knew some things that happened, and I had some characters that are good and worthwhile. Tom, mostly, and a little bit his family.

I probably expand on his mother a little bit more than you learn from The Prince and the Pauper. She is a good woman in The Prince and the Pauper, but I think I make her funnier. So I was trying to take advantage of that.

But then the history part—you know, I have exchanged some emails with an author from Boston, Bill Martin, who writes historical fiction. Not Tudor, but American historical fiction, from the Revolution up to the 1960s. And he told me that when he starts a book, his research is a mile wide and an inch deep. He knows a little about a lot, and then as the story progresses, things start to pile up as you need to know more.

And I sort of did the same. When I started, I did not want to hamstring myself. I knew some things. I knew some things about Jane and Edward and the Tudors. So I took advantage of that, but I sort of told myself, I am not a historian. I am an author.

And I do not mean to sound like I am putting myself in the same category as Shakespeare, but if you want to know history, do not read Shakespeare. It is like saying Game of Thrones is history. Right? I mean, it is a story.

But on the other hand, I am not Quentin Tarantino. I try to stay with what actually happened. Sharon Tate really did get murdered by the Manson family. So I tried not to change that kind of thing. Jane—things were going to happen, and I was not going to change them. I moved some things around. Some things happen in different places than they actually did, just to make it convenient for Tom to be there.

So anyway, I tried to mix it in, and early on, I probably did more exposition. And my writing coach really pushed me to try to make it more seamless—to try to tell the history as part of the story. So I tried to do that. I hope I did, and I hope I gave people enough history that they did not have to keep running back to Wikipedia to figure out what the heck was going on.

Heather: Yeah. Easier though than your Collier’s Encyclopedia after all.

Frederic: Right?

Heather: Yeah.

Frederic: Yeah, yeah. So I tried to mix the history in, but not make it too onerous—just make it clear how it fit into the story.

Heather: Mm-hmm.

Frederic: You know, in some places I did more, and in some places I did less. Obviously, Jane becomes more important. In some ways, the Tom and Jane relationship becomes the relationship in the story. But, you know, I mean, Thomas Seymour and Edward Seymour sort of come in and out, and John Dudley, they are in the story, but they come and go. Even Queen Mary, you know.

Heather: Yeah. Okay. And in this book, there are so many kind of deep themes, even though I know The Prince and the Pauper was written, what, for children of all ages or something? Did not Twain say that?

Frederic: Yes, he did.

Heather: It kind of has that same sort of style. So it does not read like something really heavy, but at the same time, there are some really deep themes in there around class, identity, loss, and temptation.

I am just wondering, were there any themes that felt most personal to you? How did you weave those themes in and make it accessible in a way that did not feel like one was reading something overly heavy? Like, you could read it before bed and fall asleep. It was not super hard reading, obviously. So how did you work these themes into a story based on a children’s story and still make it thought-provoking?

Frederic: You know, even Twain, in the parts where Edward is getting into trouble in London, it is pretty dark. Some of it is quite dark, actually. And it is a good thing Miles Hendon is there to get him out of different jams. There were two aspects of this that I focused on. Like I said, friendship—these young people being very close friends. Some of it, I tried to keep simple. As Patti Smith would say, I wanted to make them just kids.

But, on the other hand, there is some loss, as you say. And Tom, in the first paragraph of the book, points out that he is going to go through some things that a young person, or a young man, should not have to deal with.

And there is an aspect of it. You know, people have asked me, why do you call it The Scoundrel Son? And my writing coach said to me once, you know, that stories, as you try to frame them, are about what the main character wants and what is in their way—what the obstacle is that they have to get around.

And what he wants is not to be his father. His father is a scoundrel. His father’s a jerk. And he really wants to be a good person, and he wants to work at that. But what he learns in this story, to some extent, is that even if you are a really good person, bad things still happen to you. And you have to ask, what do you do about them? How do you get around them?

He is not so religious that he says, well, it is just God’s plan and that is it. Other people in the story do have that perspective, but Tom does not necessarily. So he is trying to come to grips with that.

And I do not know whether it is unfortunate, but I, as a young person, dealt with loss—losing someone who was a member of my family. You can imagine that in the 1500s, people died all the time. But it is another thing when it is your best friend or someone like that. Then that changes how you grasp it. And so that rang true for me, and I wanted to explore that a little bit. But also in the context of these three kids being friends and liking each other. And yes, I think Tom is smitten.

Heather: Yeah. It is very sweet. And talk to me about Jane, and then there is another female character, Allie, who is a friend of Tom’s as well. She is a really super cool character. I really loved her. What inspired her, and how did you feel about writing these strong female characters in the Tudor world? Talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on that.

Frederic: You know, that is always something when you are writing your first novel—how am I going to do? Am I going to do a decent job in making these people real?

So we do have these two young female characters. Allie—Allison—who lives in the neighborhood. She is poor, but she is spunky. I am married to a former tomboy, I guess you would say, who wanted to go out for the football team kind of thing. And so Allie, you know, she likes to climb things, she can run faster than anyone in the neighborhood, and she is not above punching someone in the nose who is giving her a bad time.

And Jane is the total other side of that. Jane is one of the most educated young ladies in England at the time, and she would much prefer to read a book than to go hunting with her parents. So it is a little bit of a yin and yang there.

But I wanted Allie to be Tom’s friend and confidante. As the story goes on, she is the person in the neighborhood that he really talks to about what is going on in his complicated life. And she gives him a rule—she tells him to try to figure out how he would deal with these people if they were not royal, if they were just normal people.

So I tried to make her real. I am glad you liked her because I tried to make her real. And Katie Holman said she really liked my portrayal of Jane. So yes, I am glad—so much so that in my second book, my main character is a woman.

Heather: Oh, wow. All right.

Frederic: And I was willing to even take that leap. So, thank you. I think Allie is interesting. I like her a lot. I tend to like my characters.

Heather: Cool. Well, that is helpful if you are spending a lot of time with them.

Frederic: Yeah, exactly.

Heather: Can you share what your second book is about?

Frederic: Yeah, it’s totally different. It is historical, but it is mostly based on my grandmother’s life. So it takes place in the 1920s and 1930s. In a phrase, my grandmother, at 19 years old, a mother of two, leaves her abusive husband and does not go back. Then she spends the next 10 years trying to make a go of it. That is hard enough to do in 2025, never mind 1926. So that is the story.

My grandmother did not talk about her life that much. My mother was like the happiest person I ever knew, and then I learned her young life was not that easy. So I wanted to… I took a few words my grandmother said about her life and then wrote a 300-page novel.

Heather: Okay. All right. That is very cool. I am sure that was an emotional journey as well.

Frederic: Yeah, to go on. It was. It was fun.

Heather: Yeah. Also, I want to say that one of our guests is watching from Paris, so hello to Paris. They ask, “I do love historical fiction. I could not find a French translation online. Do you have any plans to translate your book into French or any other language?”

Frederic: I do have a foreign agent. That sounds more intriguing than it means, but I have a woman who contacted me and is trying to line up translation and foreign rights. So I hope so. There is not a French translation yet, but maybe soon.

Heather: We will keep our fingers crossed.

Frederic: Right?

Heather: Yeah. All right. Very cool. There is a scene that stuck with me when Tom realized that he never asked Edward how he was doing, and it is this emotional shift in it. Do you remember writing that? Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that part.

Frederic: You know, I was thinking, sometimes in our lives — and I have been around a bit — you meet people who are noted or known for some reason. Not the king of England, but you know. And Tom realizes that he did not. The king asked him how he was doing, but he did not ask the king how he was. And not like, how are things in Scotland going or what are you doing about France — none of that stuff. But just, how do you feel? How are you? What is your favorite color? What do you like to do? Do you like music? Do you like these kinds of things?

And he decides that if they are really going to be friends — and this is me delving into what friendship means — he has to ask those things. He has to get more involved in what is going on with Edward and get into more of that life.

I think there is also a bit where he says one thing he realizes is that what Edward needs is an expert in being an 11-year-old boy. And he says, I am an expert in that. I am the expert on that. And so they start playing chess together. He comes in with a few jokes every time, and it is just 11-year-olds hanging out and eating all the snacks that the king can bring.

Heather: Yeah. Very cool. So my final question is, if you could sit down with Mark Twain and show him this book, what would you want him to know about your take on his character, Tom?

Frederic: Yeah. As I said, Tom is probably not as central a character in The Prince and the Pauper. It is probably more Edward and the adventures and misadventures he has out in the London slums. So I wanted to, since I decided I was going to tell this story from Tom’s point of view, I wanted to be true.

You know, when you write a novel, you are writing a lot of lies to tell a greater truth. I wanted it to be true to the character that Twain had, but I wanted to figure out, where is he five years later? Where is that young boy five years later? And be true, and have this be a reasonable extrapolation of that.

I tried really hard to find out why Twain wrote this book, because The Prince and the Pauper came out between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Heather: Huck Finn, yeah.

Frederic: And I know he traveled a lot and went to England a lot. He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. But why did he write The Prince and the Pauper? What I did find in his autobiography — and I have written a little piece for my newsletter about it — is that his daughter loved this story. The Prince and the Pauper was her favorite story.

Heather: Oh, interesting.

Frederic: So that was interesting. Twain came back from the road, and they said, oh, we have to go to the neighbor’s house. And they went over to the neighbor’s house. He said, oh, can I just stay home? And they dragged him over, and they had set up a stage, and his daughter and her friend — they were about twelve at the time — put on a play of The Prince and the Pauper.

Heather: How fun. Oh, how fun. That is so cool. What a good story.

Frederic: Yeah.

Heather: That is very cool.

Frederic: So I would be happy if he thought that who Tom was is who he imagined Tom could be down the road.

Heather: Awesome. Well, Fred, it was lovely to meet you and your book The Scoundrel Son. It was a very fun read, so thank you for taking the time to talk with me about it and share your experience. Where can people find you and your books? Plug your stuff.

Frederic: So, you can probably find my book almost anywhere. If you go to your bookstore, it may not be on the shelf, but they certainly can order it. My publisher goes through Ingram, so it is pretty available.

Certainly, you can find it on Amazon. The ebook is only available as a Kindle version, so only through Amazon. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, it is part of your subscription. You can read it as part of that. You can also check out my website, which is fredericfahey.com, and find things from there as well.

Heather: Perfect. Awesome. Any parting thoughts? Do you want to leave me with anything? You don’t have to, I’m just wondering if there is anything I missed that you want to add?

Frederic: Yeah, people have asked me if there is going to be more. Like I said, Tom lived to be an old man, and people have asked me if there are going to be more stories.

So I am working on what started out as a short story, but I don’t know where it is going to go. As I said, Twain said he lived to be an old man. So in the time after The Prince and the Pauper, there are a lot of interesting people.

Heather: Yeah, there definitely are. All right, we will stay tuned for that and see what happens.

Frederic: Yeah, so that is one of the things that is out there. I am working on a little short story now that I hope is interesting.

Heather: Okay. Well, Fred, thanks for taking the time.

Frederic: Heather, thanks for the invitation. I really appreciate it. This was really fun.