"I spent two days in a deep slumber as a result of the friar's potion, but I cannot say it was restful. I do not recall dreaming in the usual way. My head was filled with events and faces and they were all mixed up. I knew that the feud between my family and that of my beloved Romeo had claimed the lives of dear friends. I saw Tybalt, Romeo, and even my own father, but I did not know who was living and who was dead. It was a horrid condition and I told myself that soon I would wake and everything would be clear. Then I remembered that I was to wake in my family's tomb and this filled me with such dread that I came to fear waking as much as I feared the dreams."
Thus begins the lost diary of Juliet in which she tells the fantastic tale of how she and Romeo survive their apparent suicides and escape across the Veneto. In the course of their travels they are hunted by powerful forces seeking their destruction. But they are also aided by many characters familiar from elsewhere in the plays of Shakespeare.
Set against a backdrop of mystery and intrigue that includes a suspicious Pope and a mysterious Turkish Ambassador, Romeo and Juliet are challenged to see their love survive and their simple lives permanently and dramatically transformed.
Author David Gray spent 3 years researching Escape From Verona using sources available in the United States and travel to locations all across northeast Italy. With maps of varying ages and accuracy, Gray sought out the places where the legends behind Shakespeare’s plays are supposed to have taken place… some still existing much as they did centuries ago, others irretrievably altered by time. The result is a mix of pinpoint descriptions and whimsical suppositions that set the stage for the intricately woven tapestry of Romeo and Juliet’s path through the plays of Shakespeare and the real history of the Veneto.
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