On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.

Little free library

Found in the book exchange red phone box run by the Brockley Society on Lewisham Way.

Read this book after finding it at the Lewisham Way book exchange.

Stratford, where the story is set, was the place I last visited during February before the beginning of the first lockdown. Of course, apart from Mary Arden's Farm, I went to all the Shakespeare sites in the town. For a piece of fiction this novel moving invokes the atmosphere and daily life during the time that Hamnet lived. While his father and other family members are buried within Holy Trinity Church, Hamnet's grave is in a lonely spot outside. This novel does much to remember Shakespeare's "lost" son. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

I will be passing this book, as a piece of pre-reading, onto a friend who is eager to visit Stratford.