The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: The Continuing Adventures of Judith Shakespeare

In Tiffany’s diverting sequel to My Father Had a Daughter, late playwright William Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, flees accusations of witchcraft and gets caught between both sides of the English Civil War. It’s 1646, and Judith, 61, is a healer, apothecary, and midwife in Stratford, tending to stricken Royalists and Roundheads alike. After attending a rich woman’s birthing call with her distant relative Jane Simcox and six-year-old niece, Pearl, who crawls on the floor and growls as if possessed, Judith is accused of witchcraft. With the town council preparing to interrogate her, she leaves Stratford with Jane and Pearl for London. There, Judith reconnects with her former lover Nathan Field, a Globe theater actor and Royalist. Meanwhile, Jane, a Puritan zealot, takes the side of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians. Tiffany serves up an odd concoction of Elizabethan and American language (Judith describes the war’s “hurly-burly” as a “cockamamie show”), providing the narrative with a sense of immediacy that can sometimes feel jarring. The character work is better, as Tiffany delves into Judith’s fierce independence and her emotional turmoil over the loss of her adult sons to the plague. This vivid historical will keep readers turning the pages. Agent: Julia Livshin, Julia Livshin Literary. (Feb.)