Sunday 29 November 2009

My Thoughts: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe


Another rain swept day here in old Blighty, so I decided to stay in and curl up with a book, blanket and lots of cups of tea. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane was the perfect book for this type of lazy Sunday afternoon. Its what I would call a comfort book, not much thought or effort needed.

Connie starts the book with her Oral exam in preparation to become a Proffessor of American Colonial history at Harvard. She agress to spend her summer cleaning out an old misused house just a town away from Salem.
Inside the old house she stumbles upon a key and a slip of paper with the words Deliverance Dane written on it. Eager to find out what this means she starts researching the name, and finds that it is that of a woman hung as a witch during the Salem Witch Trials.
This knowledge then leads her to continue her reseacrh to make it part of her dissertation, but the research soon becomes personal and she is on the hunt for a book to prove that some of the women hung in the Salem Trials were actual witches.
Its full of huge coincidences, links to her past, a fit lover and she misses massive clues which you can see spread out before you. Despite that it was a good read if your looking for something easy to curl up with during the holidays.

One thing it has done is make me want to find out more about Witches throughout history. I was thinking that I might do this and link it to the Women Unbound Challenge.
Has any book you've read lead you to read up more about the subject?

2 comments:

rhapsodyinbooks said...

I agree there would be much interest in researching witches throughout history. If you find any good reading on it, I hope you share the results with us!

katrina said...

I will, I promise