MADreads

I like a good witch book

July 29th, 2009 Molly - Central

2008 was a great year for witches.  Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader and Kathleen Kent’s The Heretic’s Daughter were both excellent reads.  John Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick was rather eh, but still a big book as far as witches go.  Even if that book was only eh, I spent far too much time going back to read the Witches of Eastwick and then watching the 80’s movie.  I had never seen the movie before and found it highly entertaining, if only for Cher’s fantastic hair.

I predict the witch book this summer is going to be the biggest one, yet.  The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe combines elements of all three of last year’s books.  There’s mystery and intrigue.  There is a modern day Salem element with flashbacks and psychic visions of previous Salemites.  The main character, Connie Goodwin, is a Harvard graduate student specializing in American Colonial life, so there’s history, history, and more history.  And there is a common thread that ties generations of women together: women who have special skills with herbs and healing and possibly other more magical powers.

The plot revolves around Connie discovering an exciting primary source for her dissertation.  She desperately needs to come up with something new and starts investigating the possibility that a centuries old book of recipes or “physick book” is still floating around.  Her advisor is a little too invested in her finding the book and weird things start happening after she relocates to her grandmother’s home outside Salem.  When Connie finds some old “recipe” cards in her grandmother’s kitchen written in Latin, the plot really starts to heat up.

This book certainly gets you thinking about women and their role in the history of medicine.  Many of the books about the Salem witch trials focus on the innocence of the accused or what the idea of witchcraft stood for in a Puritanical society, but this book draws attention to the women who did have special skills in healing.  The witches and their physick as presented in this book more closely resemble modern medicine than blood letting or blistering or prayer, common medical practices in Colonial times.  It makes you wonder how much progress may have been lost because women and their recipe books were not trusted or taken seriously.

You may also wonder what hidden gems are tucked away in the special collections of libraries, though I’m pretty sure we don’t have any physick books shelved alongside the local yearbook collection here in the basement at Madison Public Library.  If you’re looking for a spellbinding physick book, stick with Deliverance Dane.

Entry Filed under: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction