Hamnet
(Book)

"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11-year-old son Hamnet -- a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain -- and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor -- penniless, bullied by a violent father -- falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman -- a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, HAMNET is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down -- a magnificent departure from one of our most gifted novelists." -- Provided by publisher.