Runaway Will
Linda C. Fisher
Paperback
(Royal Fireworks Publishing, March 15, 2011)
From the moment sixteen-year-old Will Shakespeare runs away from home, his goal is to avoid danger. But Fate ignores Will's plan. "You're a handsome boy," Volka, the old Gypsy queen, tells him. "With the right clothes, you'll fit in with us. Fit in, with these fearsome Gypsies? With their whips and knives and bears? Never! Then again, when you're on the run, hiding from authorities, home is where you find it. How and why did William Shakespeare go to London from Stratford? How and where did he first learn to write plays? When did he first fall in love? Runaway Will has some highly original answers while transporting us to an adventure among the sometimes violent, but also romantic, Gypsies in Elizabethan England. Linda Fisher's first novel about William Shakespeare, A Will of Her Own, also published by Royal Fireworks Press, was inspired by the realization that, since he was an excellent judge of human nature, Shakespeare would probably have made a wonderful sleuth. Typically, junior high English students read Romeo and Juliet, and Runaway Will echoes elements of that story in the relationship between Will and Melita. Despite being fiction, both Fisher's novels about Shakespeare teach factual information about him and the society in which he lived and which shaped his plays. "Runaway Will is an entertaining and quick-paced read. Young readers will enjoy following Will through several scrapes and narrow misses, and even older readers will find themselves entranced by Fisher's historical accuracy..."-Mollie Smith Waters (English and Theater instructor at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College, Greenville, Alabama.)