The Heretic’s Daughter
Submitted by Book Nut
by Kathleen Kent
ages: adult
First sentence: “The distance by wagon from Billerica to neighboring Andover is but nine miles.”
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This is a fascinating, harrowing tale about a time in American history that I know very little about: the Salem witch trials.
Our main character, Sarah Carrier, is growing up in Billerica (and later Andover), Massachusetts. She’s often at odds with her hard, logical, unsentimental mother, Martha. Then, the summer of 1691, Martha is arrested on suspicion of being a witch, and asks Sarah to do the unspeakable: to cry out against her own mother in order to save her life. That’s the basic plot in a nutshell, but the book is so much more than that. Rambling and long, it’s a look at how Puritan communities and families functioned and interacted. It’s an attempt to understand why the Salem witch trials happened — whether it was just misunderstanding, fear, or jealousy; though in that case, I’m not sure it succeeded. I was left with almost more questions, especially after the descriptions of Martha’s trial. It’s almost incomprehensible to the modern mind how exactly everyone could let these abuses of human rights could go on. It was a different time and place, and that feeling is something Kent captured quite well.
The ending, for me, was a bit off, though. After Martha’s trial (and eventual execution), the book goes on telling us the fate of Sarah. Sure, it’s called the heretic’s daughter, but I’m not sure I really cared that much about Sarah’s fate. Perhaps it was because I was more emotionally invested in the story of her mother, and their relationship. Or maybe it was because Kent leaps over years and years in the final 7 pages. At any rate, the final revelation, the final secret her mother was keeping came as a “Huh, what?!” moment, which lessened the impact of the rest of the book.
Which, to be sure, was fascinating.
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