Witch Child: 21 Great Bloomsbury Reads for the 21st Century (21st Birthday Celebratory Edn) - Softcover

CELIA REES

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747589976 ISBN 13: 9780747589976

Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING PLC, 2002

Synopsis

After Mary sees her grandmother accused of witchcraft and hung for the crime, she is hurried to safety by an unknown woman who gives her tools to keep a record of her days - paper and ink. Then Mary is taken to a boat in Plymouth and from there sails to the New World where she hopes to make a new life among the pilgrims. But old superstitions die hard and soon Mary finds that she will have to make important choices to ensure her survival. Vividly evoked, this is a powerful literary achievement by Celia Rees that is utterly engrossing from start to finish.

About this title

Review:

During the witch hunts of the mid-1600s, many young Englishwomen died on the gallows, innocent victims of false or hysterical accusations of witchcraft. But what of those women who actually claimed the name "witch" as their own? In the pages of her secret journal, Mary Nuttall reveals what it is like to live in a climate of mistrust and piety in which differences are dangerous and rumors can kill, where she must hide her heritage as a healer and pagan. With a sure hand, she describes her beloved grandmother's trial and hanging as a witch, her own rescue by a mysterious noblewoman, and her eventual passage to the New World and the forest settlement of Beulah. There Mary falls under a curtain of suspicion when she willingly chooses to explore the dark woods shunned by the fearful colonists and makes friends with some of the spiritual native people. When several girls in the community begin to shriek and swoon, and the same minister who damned Mary's grandmother comes to search for signs of witchcraft, Mary is subjected to close and deadly scrutiny.

Breaking with most historical fiction about witchcraft (such as Elizabeth Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond), British author Celia Rees raises the stakes and the tension by placing a real witch at the center of her story. Witch Child is an engrossing, suspenseful novel that will cast a spell over both readers of historical fiction and fans of witchcraft series from Circle of Three to Sweep. --Jennifer Hubert

From the Inside Flap:

Read by Jennifer Ehle
Approx. 6.5 hours
4 cassettes
Mary's grandmother is executed for witchcraft, and Mary is forced to leave her home to avoid the same fate. At first she flees to the English countryside, but when the atmosphere of superstition and suspicion becomes all consuming she leaves on a boat for America in the hope that she can start over and forget her past. But during the journey, she realizes that the past is not so easy to escape.

About this edition

• Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING PLC
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0747589976
• ISBN 13: 9780747589976
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256