The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
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A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history -- the Salem witch trials. Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key secreted within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest to find out who this woman was, and to unearth a rare colonial artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge of herbs and other, stranger things. As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined. Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the trials in the 1690s, and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation. About the Author Katherine Howe is completing a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies and is a descendant of Elizabeth Proctor, who survived the Salem witch trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not. The idea for this novel developed while Howe was studying for her doctoral qualifying exams and walking her dog through the woods between Marblehead and Salem. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband.Publishers WeeklyHowe's novel moves back and forth between the summer of 1991 in Salem, Mass., and the 17th-century witch trial era, as college student Connie Goodwin chances upon a mysterious book written by the elusive Deliverance Dane. The characters are thin and the plot predictable, but Katherine Kellgren does her best with the material. Her voice is pleasing, her pacing and emphasis good, her diction clear but conversational. Most of her characters are distinguishable and reasonably represented, but the exaggerated British accent she adopts for the villain makes him more comical than terrifying. A Hyperion/Voice hardcover (Reviews, May 25). (June)
