The Shakespeare Connection

Cal is bored: his mother has sent him to England with a school party visiting Stratford. He has no empathy with the playwright's work until he's transported back to Shakespeare's time where he becomes player and family friend entrusted with the task of finding Shakespeare's lost manuscript 'Love's Labour's Won'. The historical detail is fascinating, but it's Cal's friendship with Hamnet and the tension in the search for the manuscript which really hold the reader. There are emotional parallels between Cal's situation and Judith's, Shakespeare's daughter, but it's greed which echoes most forcibly down the centuries when Cal accidentally brings the manuscript back to the present. A thoroughly enjoyable and often thought-provoking read.