17th Century New England Witches: Fact and Fiction

For the past two weeks, I haven't been reading much because I wasn't taking the bus every day, but I did manage to finish a novel by Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future.  As with all her novels, this one was about generations of women and their relationships with each other and the men in their life.  And there's always an element of magic with Hoffman's work; this story was no exception. In the case of the book's main characters, the Sparrow women, the magic goes all the way back to the 1600s in Massachusetts, with the appearance of a mysterious girl who walked out of the woods one day speaking gibberish, who attracted flocks of sparrows that perched on her as she worked in her garden, and who was later found to be unable to feel pain.  They took her for a witch, of course, and executed her for her supposed "crimes."

Her descendents all suffered in some way for their ancestor's deeds, and the story is in part about how they deal with that legacy.  It was a good story, compelling but with a nice, comfortable pace. There were mysteries to be unraveled for each generation of Sparrow women, and problems that found satisfying solutions by the end of the book. I recommend it highly.

In keeping with the theme of early Massachusetts, witchcraft and mysterious happenings, I'm now reading a history book, The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England, by Emerson W. Baker.  Mr. Baker is a history professor at Salem State College, and so he knows his witches.  The book tells about some strange doings in Maine and Massachusetts in the late 1600s (incidences of lithobolia, for instance) that many people of the time attributed to witchcraft; since then, they've been attributed to ghosts, poltergeists, and extraterrestrials.  It's pretty interesting so far, though I'm only about a quarter of the way through.

I started this book once before when I bought it to read about one of my ancestors, Jane Walford, who was one of the people featured in the stories.  I had put it aside because I was already involved in another book.  But now I'm committed to finishing it.

I'll let you know how things come out next time.