William Shakespeare was father to three children: Susanna, his oldest, and twins Judith and Hamnet. This is Judith s tale... Growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Judith and her twin brother, Hamnet, see little of their father. His visits are infrequent, and they know him only as "the scribbling one." Bit by bit, however, he begins to share with them his poetry of star-crossed lovers, a jailed English king, a murderous moneylender, a fairy queen. By the edge of the River Avon, the twins devise games based on their father s wondrous poetry to entertain each other whenever he is away. Then, after a dark family tragedy, young Judith happens on a scrap copy of her father s newest play, left behind in his haste to return to London. She reads it, and is shocked to find it a comic treatment of her family s grief, especially her own. Outraged, she follows her father to London with an audacious plan to sabotage the play s first performance. But the city is a revelation to her, as is her father s world of the theater, and his new playhouse, the Globe. As Judith comes fully to understand the words her father has written, and why he writes his plays, she discovers that the two of them share more than she could have possibly imagined