NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time. Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeares life … here is a novel … so gorgeously written that it transports you.” The Boston Globe

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutorpenniless and bullied by a violent fatherfalls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her familys land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.