The Salem Witch Trials Are New All Over Again

I just finished an incredible book last night. It took me a bit to get through but was well worth it in the end. The book is call "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane." Quite a title if you ask me. Jennifer and I were in Barnes & Noble a few months ago and we wandered over to the new authors section. She saw this book and after reading the inside cover decided to buy it. Normally I would caution against such a rash decision, especially since the book was hardcover and that's quite an investment. If she were to read this though she would comment "Hardcovers really help new authors out. Paperbacks are great but the author really doesn't see a lot of that money. And if you're a rising author you need every penny you can get to continue writing." So she got the hardcover andI just smiled. Less than a month later she had announced to me that she had finished her book after starting it a week or two after buying it. She told me it was really enjoyable and that she thought I would enjoy it. At first I wasn't sure if I would. I was still skeptical of the book just because she didn't really know anything about it before she bought it besides what was in the front flap of the jacket. Those jackets can be quite deceiving sometimes.

About a month ago when I was visiting home, I stopped by her house to watch a movie with her. After the movie we decided that it was late enough that I should be heading out, but not before I raided her bookshelf for a few pieces of literature. This was only fair since she had raided mine a while ago. Amongst my finds were "V for Vendetta" (Amazing!) and the aforementioned "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane." V took me literally two days to read and was absolutely fabulous. I then read the first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Brilliant. Alan Moore is a genius and a freaking loony at the same time.

Anyways... I then started reading "Deliverance Dane" and fell in love with it within three chapters. The first few chapters are indeed slow but necessary. I didn't understand why details were being so flushed out at first until I was half way through the story. The story follows two women, Connie Goodwin and Deliverance Dane (and her daughter and her daughter's daughter and so on) through their lives. Connie is a Harvard grad student working towards her PhD. in history. Her story takes place in 1991. Deliverance's tale follows her in the late seventeenth century. She is a puritan living in Salem. During the witch trials. You can probably see where this is going....

The book uses the different view points as a sort of device to break up the action within the main plot line. In the first half of the book, the reader longs for the "interlude" chapters, or those chapters which take them back to Deliverance and her descendants' time. In the second half of the book, the author, Katherine Howe, uses the "time travel" technique to break up the action of Connie's story as things start to piece together for her. It's wonderfully maddening as the story starts to roll faster and faster down its slippery slope towards its climax and eventual conclusion.

The best part about this book is simply the writing. The characters are real. Their interactions are real. Besides the fantastical elements of this book, the situations are real. I loved reading this book not because it had a wonderfully compelling plot and used interesting and gripping techniques. No, I thoroughly enjoyed this book because I could relate to the characters and situations and truly feel what they felt. Miss Howe is an incredible writer and I am quite anxious to see what she writes next.

http://www.physickbook.com/

This is her website, by the way. Very intriguing. Hope you get the chance to read it.