The Heretic's Daughter, by Kathleen Kent

This is a great book. Well-written, well-researched, and well-liked by me. There were two things about this book that were on the verge of being complaints but wound up as wonderful positives:

(1) Pace. I was worried at the beginning of this book because it slogged a little bit. Knowing that it wasn't a particularly long book, I was worried that it would be one of those books that set up and set up and then raced to the finish. But as soon as I got to the point in the beginning of the book where I said "this is kinda slow," she cranked it up a little. And as soon as I got settled into that pace, she cranked it up a little more. Resulting in the perfect formula for the perfect pace. The book was split almost perfectly in half, with the mother's arrest for witchcraft occurring halfway through. So we got half background/family life, half trials/prison life. Good formula. Kind of the same formula as Life of Pi, which was also paced wonderfully.

(2) Excessive metaphors. When I was in the creative writing program in college, I never wrote a really good short story. But almost every one of my stories had some good moment in it - a description of something that was nicely done. In my imagination, Kathleen Kent took ALL those good moments from stories she'd written or that were just inside her head and decided to put them all in this, her first novel, in an attempt to make sure the book was good. The result for me would normally be eye-rolling. But her descriptive metaphors were so good that my eyes stayed squarely in their sockets and I just enjoyed. She had a description of searching for a spider on its massive web that, for me, rivaled the scene of Gatsby staring off at the green light, one of my all-time favorite literary passages. What beautiful words, Ms. Kent. I hope you still have some saved up for your next book.

I had a hard time settling in to the language of this book at first. The narrative is designed to put you in the 17th century along with the dialogue. I got into the swing of it, though, before the first chapter ended and it was very effective in painting a picture of the times. The stoic love that develops among this family is era-appropriate, believable, and heart-breaking. She did a great job making each character come out of the woodwork in their own time. Especially Thomas Carrier (don't make any assumptions that the Heretic's Daughter's heretic parent is her mother!). But the most amazing thing about this book is the horrific picture she paints in the Salem prison. I can see the piles of barely-alive bodies, hear the women's screams, smell the filthy clothes, and it's all horrible.

I knew very little about the Salem witch trials before reading this book. It left me wanting to know more. A project for another day!