Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is a beautifully written historical novel about love, marriage, grief, and the devastating loss that helped inspire one of literature’s greatest works.

Set in England in the late sixteenth century, the story follows Agnes, a gifted healer with an instinctive knowledge of plants and nature, and her young husband, whose talent as a playwright is only beginning to emerge. Their family life is shattered when their twins, Hamnet and Judith, are struck by the bubonic plague and one child dies.

O’Farrell reimagines the emotional world behind Shakespeare’s family, focusing on the people often left in the margins of history. Lyrical, intimate, and deeply moving, Hamnet is a powerful portrait of a marriage and a family changed forever by loss.

Paperback, Very Good