Boy, am I behind the 8-ball on this one. Everyone was talking about Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell a while ago and it didn’t spark my interest. Some of this apathy was because I didn’t like her book This Must Be the Place. But, someone left it in my Little Free Library, so I gave it a try. Amazon: “In 1580’s England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s 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 taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.” I really enjoyed it. My one complaint was that Shakespeare’s name was never used in the entire novel. It became kind of annoying. But, otherwise, it was a good read.