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The Heretic's Daughter
A Novel
Description
Salem, 1752. Sarah Carrier Chapman, weak with infirmity, writes a letter to her granddaughter that reveals the secret she has closely guarded for six decades: how she survived the Salem Witch Trials when her mother did not.
Sarah’s story begins more than a year before the trials, when she and her family arrive in a New England community already gripped by superstition and fear. As they witness neighbor pitted against neighbor, friend against friend, the hysteria escalates — until more than two hundred men, women, and children have been swept into prison. Among them is Sarah’s mother, Martha Carrier. In an attempt to protect her children, Martha asks Sarah to commit an act of heresy — a lie that will most surely condemn Martha even as it will save her daughter.
This is the story of Martha’s courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
Sarah’s story begins more than a year before the trials, when she and her family arrive in a New England community already gripped by superstition and fear. As they witness neighbor pitted against neighbor, friend against friend, the hysteria escalates — until more than two hundred men, women, and children have been swept into prison. Among them is Sarah’s mother, Martha Carrier. In an attempt to protect her children, Martha asks Sarah to commit an act of heresy — a lie that will most surely condemn Martha even as it will save her daughter.
This is the story of Martha’s courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
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Praise
"The panic and horror of the Salem witch trials in Kent's novel is conveyed with dead-eyed calm and an occasional tremor of emotion by Mare Winningham.... Her melodiousness is pleasing to the ear.... At times, the melody overwhelms the meaning, but Winningham is more than capable as a reader, and her reading of Kent's sad tale f women accused and accusing emits a hit of deeply buried, untouchable tragedy."
—Publishers Weekly
"Powerful descriptions of 9-year-old Sarah's time in prison are depicted well by the fear, anger, and repulsion Winningham projects into her reading. Author Kent, a tenth-generation descendent of Martha Carrier, who was hanged as a witch in 1692, has an accurate vision for time and place, equaled by Winningham's narration."
—AudioFile