Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Don't have an account?
Register
Advertisement
Register
Tropedia
Tropedia
158,422
pages
in: Work, Stubs, Pages with Unmarked Spoilers,
and 7 more

The Shepherd (novella)

Sign in to edit
Farm-Fresh balanceYMMV • Transmit blueRadar • WikEd fancyquotesQuotes • (Emoticon happyFunny • HeartHeartwarming • Silk award star gold 3Awesome) • RefridgeratorFridge • GroupCharacters • Script editFanfic Recs • Skull0Nightmare Fuel • Rsz 1rsz 2rsz 1shout-out iconShout Out • MagnifierPlot • Gota iconoTear Jerker • Bug-silkHeadscratchers • HelpTrivia • WMG • FilmRoll-smallRecap • RainbowHo Yay • Photo linkImage Links • Nyan-Cat-OriginalMemes • Haiku-wide-iconHaiku • Laconic • Library science symbol Source • Setting

Christmas Eve, 1957: An RAF pilot just wants to get home to spend the holiday with his family, but his jet develops electrical trouble over a fog-bound North Sea. His only hope to survive the night, let alone get home, is that somebody notices him on radar and sends up a guide aircraft to bring him in - a "shepherd."

Frederick Forsyth's novella The Shepherd was originally a Christmas gift to his wife in 1974, which was published by Hutchinson in 1975. Then it was read on-air on the CBC Radio program As It Happens in 1979, and the story became a Christmas tradition.

The Other Wiki has a spoiler-laden synopsis of the story's plot.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Tropes used in The Shepherd (novella) include:
This page needs more trope entries. You can help this wiki by adding more entries or expanding current ones.
  • Just Plane Wrong: A minor case. The protagonist flies a de Havilland Mosquito out of RAF Celle on Christmas Eve 1957. The RAF stopped stationing Mosquitos at Celle in 1950, and returned Celle to German control on 29 November 1957.
    • The cover of the first printing of the story shows a de Havilland Venom - while that isn't the aircraft in the novel, it was the aircraft model that the RAF had based at Celle in 1956-1957.
  • No Name Given: The protagonist.
  • Twist Ending: It wouldn't be a Frederick Forsyth story without one. In this case, it concerns the shepherd's identity.
  • Write What You Know: Frederick Forsyth was an RAF Flying Officer before becoming a writer.

Spoiler tropes:

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
Advertisement

Fan Feed

More Tropedia