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Friday, June 17, 2011

Salem Witches Week: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by:  Katherine Howe
published by:  HarperCollins
publish date:  May 2009

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 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 artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.

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 she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.

I read this book about a year ago.  It's one of those books I still think about from time to time.  That's always a sign of a really good book.  The writing in this book was particularly good.  The author easily intertwined the past with the present day in a new and interesting way.  I really enjoyed this book and I thought it was an intriguing mystery type book, but I thought it had a little too much supernatural to go along with it.  That was just my one little negative about it.

2 comments:

Alexis @ Reflections of a Bookaholic said...

Wow thanks for the introduction. I definitely want to read this one now. I haven't read many on this topic.

Sverige said...

The book is an interesting twist on the many views of the Salem witch trials. It has a catching form and persuades the reader to continue even thought I had already figures out the ending. I feel that it developed short of it potential and could have been a better book with more.