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This was a brilliantly written book, a stark look at the lives of families torn apart by the times. At the cause and effect of rumour and greed. LoveReading exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives.
To paraphrase part of the sources and methods section at the end of the book, Gaskill has no interest in explaining away witchcraft or in belittling people from the past for their perceived ignorance, instead taking a more emic approach to the phenomena described. The thoughts, feelings and reasonings of historical characters are respected, and taken on their own terms, something I’d argue is essential whenever dealing with anything from the past that doesn’t seem immediately rational to us. A bona fide historical classic ... Historical writing of the very highest class, impeccably researched and written with supreme imagination and wisdom. Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
The superstition, hypocrisy and despair in Mary in particulars tale was both tragic and eye opening at the same time. Springfield’s fortunes have been mixed. People were divided about my admission that being alone and travelling on foot there made me afraid: some were defensive and dismissive of the impressions of a timid Englishman abroad; others were more sympathetic and saw that mostly I was expressing admiration for the city’s history and the resilience of its people. Life in 1650s Springfield, Massachusetts is far from the Puritan idyll its townspeople might have hoped. Beset by freezing winters and withering summers, smallpox, typhoid and an unfathomably high infant mortality rate, they relied on homespun remedies – “a drink made from boiled toads… powdered sheep’s horn for sores” that to the modern reader might themselves sound like witchcraft. The townsfolk were meant to strive ever onwards – yet to take pride in their work, their achievements, was considered sinful. Their founder, Pynchon, thought himself pious, yet was effectively a feudal lord who pitted neighbours against each other, and himself started having spiritual thoughts considered heretical.
At times, this book reads almost like a dark fairytale, but at others it's very fact driven, almost rattled off like a list. This didn't necessarily deter from my enjoyment, but definitely halted the reading process. In 1967 on the Chantry estate in Ipswich. When I was three, we moved to Gillingham, Kent, so that’s where I spent my youth.Caroline Fraser is the author, most recently, of “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world. Essentially, the book is a straightforward narrative aimed at that semi-mythical creature “the general reader”. Hopefully, its only demand is that readers reserve their judgement of pre-modern believers in witches and suspend their own disbelief of the same. I wanted to show how witch trials, far from being knee-jerk reactions to inexplicable misfortune, took a long time to gather momentum and were even then often thwarted by scepticism about what constituted viable evidence. I was also keen to reconstruct a faraway world of enchantment – the kind of setting that Tolkien insisted was essential for fairy tales. As children and adults fall ill with unexplained ailments with some dying, strange lights, animals behaving oddly, and foodstuffs turning odd colours or disappearing suspicion falls on the Parsons. Gossip, arguments, signs and the Parsons' own conversations or statements with others sees these events reported to the town's leaders. There are accusations and counter-accusations involving not just the Parsons but others too. Mandy Downing has been named Curtin University’s first dean of Indigenous futures in the Faculty of Humanities. She has held a variety of research management and institutional governance roles during a decade at the Perth institution. Witches & witch trials have emerged as a trend in publishing in recent years, with the success of works like A.K. Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches which looks at the Essex witch trials. What do you think is behind this trend?Gaskill presents a compassionate, measured view dispelling several myths along the way. - Independent on Sunday A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology.
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