Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is a contemporary fantasy novel set in the 1970s at a small Midwestern College, and is based upon the traditional Scottish ballad Tam Lin.
The main character, Janet Carter, is starting her first year at Blackstock College in Minnesota as an English major. The novel is full of Classical literature and theater references throughout the revelry of the faerie court hiding as professors and students.
Pamela Dean combines the ballad of Tam Lin over Janet Carter’s four years as a student at Blackstock: where a Scottish bagpiper hunts the night with his chilling airs, a sleepwalking student picks up books left by the ghost of a young woman, and Janet will be forced to confront a wold that is as unknown to her as her biology classes.
This novel is contemporary fantasy and is the type of novel that is read over a few months because of the plot line and the length of the book.
