When the Nicholas family first sees the derelict old house near London that has been left to them in Aunt Deb's will, they are sadly disappointed. Thirteen-year-old Roger's disappointment is greatest, since, having moved place to place all his life with his gifted actor-father, he longs for some measure of stability. Then Roger and his father discover under peeling wallpaper and rotted paneling traces of a much older, more graceful house, and their misgivings disappear— until, that night, the house is filled with a sound of wild grieving that Roger traces to an empty room.
Only Roger— and later his small stepsister Pippa— sees the ghosts, among them that of Tom Garland, a well-known actor in Shakespeare's time. But Roger's father, playing Hamlet in the famous National Theatre, is caught up, unknowingly, in Tom's old tragedy. It is a frightened Roger who has to risk his life to find a way to mend the past before the present becomes its tragic echo.
POOR TOM'S GHOST, dramatic, wholly convincing, a fascinating intermingling of the centuries, portrays a family whose uncertain bonds are tested and strengthened by a threat from the past.
