Staff Picks - LibGuides at Boulder Public Library

I am a long-time fan of Maggie O'Farrell's compelling story telling through her richly detailed writing. Hamnet is an entirely absorbing novel set in Stratford, England in the late 16th century. The story imagines the domestic life of William Shakespeare and his wife prior to losing their only son 11 year old Hamnet to bubonic plague.

Publisher description:

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.

Find Hamnet in our online catalog

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