The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials.
It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.
The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.
As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, THE WITCHES is Stacy Schiff’s account of this fantastical story-the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.
An Amazon Best Book of November 2015: In 1692, at the edge of the New England wilderness, an entire village went insane. Everyone knows the story: The pre-teen daughters of the local minister are mysteriously overcome by convulsions, their uncontrollable screaming sending the superstitious community into fear and confusion. Lacking other explanations–adolescent rebellion, maybe?–Satanic influence is suspected, and accusations of witchcraft soon fly like enchanted broomsticks. The town is pitted against itself, and by the time the hysteria fades, 19 men and women are hanged, another pressed to death.
But what actually happened? Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692 steps back from more than three centuries of hyperbole and supposition, giving us our most complete account yet. It can’t have been easy: As Schiff points out early in the book, the Puritans of Salem village were often assiduous diarists and record-keepers, but first-hand accounts of the months of the hysteria are mysteriously rare-and those that exist are mainly unreliable. To construct her history, Schiff went through the looking glass, compiling seemingly every fact available to create a historically accurate narrative of events while placing it within the cultural context of 17th century New England. The results are obvious: this book is dense with facts and a large cast of characters, and readers must commit. But Schiff keeps the proceedings rolling with wry humor and an eye for the peculiar-yet-illuminating detail. This isn’t The Crucible or Blair Witch; it’s light on sensationalism, but rife with real-life toil-and-trouble. The truth, as always, is strange enough.–Jon Foro
Novelistic and terrifying Like many people, I’ve long been fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. They seems to embody so many contradictions and unsolvable debates that sit at the core of American life, such as public good vs. the rights of the rights of the individual, individual courage vs. mob mentality, or religion vs. rationalism. Plus, the struggle to create a just legal system, public safety, the idea of capital punishment, what constitutes as legal evidence, presumption of innocence, and more…
” I challenge anyone to find any better examples of writing “Their dark, however, was a very different dark. The sky over New England was crow-black, pitch-black, Bible black, so black it could be difficult at night to keep to the path, so black that a line of trees might migrate freely to another location or that you might find yourself pursued after nightfall by a rapid black hog, leaving you to crawl home.” I challenge anyone to find any better examples of writing. Stacy Schiff takes me deeply into the world of Salem so I can see it and…
“We must not believe all that these distracted children say”… The line in the title of this review was said by Martha Corey, who was hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.Â