Shadrach Byfield may well be the most unlucky, down-trodden and generally put-upon young hero to trod the pages of a novel since Charles Dickens put pen to paper and immortalized Oliver Twist. Shadrach, for his part, contrives to bribe his way out of the workhouses of Newcastle, but it costs him half his enlistment bounty and soon the 41st Regiment takes ship to Canada. Service under General Brock proves worse, if such could possibly be the case, than the beatings and taunts Shadrach suffered as a schoolboy under the hand of his arch-nemesis, John Quarry. Shadrach is a survivor, and in the end he outlasts Quarry, but in the middle "Redcoat" is the whole story of Shadrach Byfield's travels and travails from the time he left Branxton Lane to his return, many years later, after he (in his own words) had lived to be a man'.