Joel H. Morris's debut novel, All Our Yesterdays, is a prequel to Shakespeare's famous tragedy Macbeth, beginning with "the Lady's" marriage to the warlord Macbeth and ending with her learning her husband has been declared Thane of Cawdor (which is where Shakespeare's play begins). The author brilliantly imagines this woman's eleventh-century life, restoring her voice and giving her purpose while vividly describing the world in which she lived.

The story is told from the point of view of two unnamed characters: the Lady (Lady Macbeth) and her ten-year-old son, referred to throughout the novel only as "the boy." It's an interesting approach; most of history, particularly medieval history, records only what adult men's lives were like. Morris instead chooses to concentrate on those who were generally dismissed as unimportant: the women and...