Kate Heartfield's Mercutio gives Romeo's friend a backstory

Mercutio has a fairy queen on his mind and an inevitable tragedy ahead. But Ottawa author Kate Heartfield had another question about Romeo's quick-witted friend: what's his backstory?

Her novel, Mercutio, imagines the character's life before Romeo and Juliet, bringing him together with poet Dante Alighieri in a friendship shaped by supernatural encounters. Heartfield says she had been thinking about the idea for years, and she now calls it one of her favourite books.

The fascination started when she was a teenager watching Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet over and over. Mercutio caught her attention during his "Queen Mab speech," when a fantastical description of a fairy's visits to sleeping people takes a darker turn. She was left wondering what lay beneath the character's humour, and the question persisted until Dante came along.

"They were played by actors as if there was a backstory and a reason why," Heartfield says.

Dante was first meant to be a brief cameo at the start of the book. He became one of its central characters. The two meet in the opening chapter, and their friendship drives much of the novel, which also explores links between Romeo and Juliet and Dante's Divine Comedy and how both texts treat love in many forms.

Heartfield wrote the book to work for readers who haven't opened Romeo and Juliet since high school, or ever. Reviewers have echoed that. Kate Story called it "an extraordinary piece of writing, imbued with impeccable research," adding that the history is worn lightly. Aimee Ogden called it "a secret insiders' guide to what shaped the best character in Romeo and Juliet," and Julie Czerneda wrote that "you'll never see Mercutio the same again."

The book goes on sale from Indigo, Amazon and other booksellers.