Stellar historical fiction imbued with a rich sense of place.New York Times Book Review

“Witty, resilient, and fiercely intelligent, Judith emerges as a heroine for the ages. Her journey, rich in historical authenticity and imaginative storytelling, offers insights that resonate across the centuries.”Christina Baker Kline,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Exiles

For readers of Hilary Mantel and Madeline Miller, a deeply engrossing work of historical fictiona tale about a woman of the Shakespeare family struggling to manage both her private grief and public danger.

At the age of sixty-one, Judith Shakespeare, a midwife-apothecary and twin of the long-dead Hamnet, must flee provincial Stratford on horseback to avoid arrest for witchcraft. Her traveling companions are a zealous Puritan woman and child who have been displaced by civil warthe bloody seventeenth-century strife between Royalists and Roundheads. Judith is also leaving her marriage, which has foundered since the wrenching loss of two adult sons to the plague.

The sequel to the authors My Father Had a Daughter, a tale of Judith in her youth, The Owl Was a Bakers Daughter revisits this character for the agesShakespeares sharp-tongued, witty youngest child, no less feisty in her maturity. Four-hundred years after Judiths death, Grace Tiffany brings her back onto center stage. Judiths latest tale offers profound insightsinto friendship, motherhood, marriage, religious extremism, and warwhich remain resoundingly true today.