Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials Author: Visit Amazon's Marilynne K. Roach Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0306821206 | Format: PDF
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials Description
Review
InfoDad Blog, 10/10/13
“Roach shows how thoroughly she has researched her subject…while also giving modern readers something to think about in our own days of social and political witch hunts. Six Women of Salem…will provide a greater sense of the real-world lives of those who engaged in and were victimized by those events.”
San Francisco Book Review/Sacramento Book Review, 10/7/13
“The book is super detailed and fantastically informative on the subject…An eye-opening piece of work…Each page drips with an honest and impartial narrative…Roach has done a great job in honoring the memories of these women with a tasteful and harmonious book.”
Kirkus Reviews, 9/15/13
“[Full of] the author’s deep knowledge of virtually every man, woman and child affected by the trials in this bizarre period.”
Examiner.com, 9/27/13
“Roach delivers a historically intimate narrative that gives readers a front row seat to this desperate and dangerous time in history.”—Examiner.com, 9/27
Roanoke Times, 10/27/13
“A focused look at the lives of six of the accused, their accusers, and their neighbors who were part of a dark period in American history.”
Leavenworth Times, 10/29/13
“A well written novel approach to the witch trials worth the time taken while you await the trick-or-treaters this Halloween.”
Open Letters Monthly, 10/1/13
“Immediately immerses its readers in the events of that horrible, vertiginous year, a year which almost certainly started off as mere pranking by some mean-spirited girls but then grew into something much blacker and more complicated. Roach immerses her readers through her customary vivid, forceful writing…The seriously inquisitive now have another great book on the subject.”
ForeWord, Winter 2013
“[Roach’s] fact-based insight into these women’s lives, along with the moments she breaks into short, fictionalized scenes, puts these lives into perspective, allowing readers to connect with the events in a way not afforded in other accounts of this period…Roach’s work will shed new light on the Salem witch trials, not only by showing how the accusers may have truly believed they were bewitched and tortured, but also by making the innocent women come to life.”
Library Journal, 12/1/2013
“Roach animates information woven together from court records, trial notes, diaries, vital records, sermon notes, and family lore in a successful attempt to personalize [the women’s] lives, drawing the reader away from commonly believed stereotypes and sensational folklore.”
American History, April 2014
“[A] richly detailed tapestry of life in 17th-century Salem.”
About the Author
Marilynne K. Roach earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and works as both a historian and illustrator. She has drawn illustrations and written how-to and travel articles for the Boston Globe, has lectured to groups ranging from kindergarten to senior citizens, and has written several scholarly articles on various aspects of the witch scare.
She is a lifelong resident of Watertown, Massachusetts.
- Paperback: 472 pages
- Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0306821206
- ISBN-13: 978-0306821202
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Many thanks to Perseus Books Group / Da Capo Press for providing this eGalley to me through NetGalley. Although it was provided at no cost, I am under no obligation to give a positive review.
Growing up, I was very fortunate to have my maternal grandmother and her husband work in the tourism industry in Williamsburg, Virginia. I got an early exposure to colonial America to go along with my always strong love of history in general. Naturally, I have also been interested in the happenings in Salem, Massachusetts, knowing it can be very difficult to separate fact from fiction from urban legend.
Enter this wonderful book by Marilynne K. Roach. It should be noted before beginning that this is not Roach's first rodeo when it comes to scholarly work on the Salem witch trials. She's well-respected in that area as a quick Google search will reveal.
That said, what Roach brings to the table with this offering is humanization of the accused as well as providing a smaller scope of the trials. Rather than looking at the trials in a larger overview, she takes six women accused of being witches and gets into extraordinary detail about their lives. With each woman, she digs into their family, genealogy and the events surrounding the accusations against them and subsequent trial.
This works very well to humanize the accused, as you can see them as individual persons, not just numbers or statistics. Additionally, Roach makes an effort to get into each woman's head to try and see the happenings through their eyes. This further brings the subject to a more personal level.
The only downside of the book is that it does get tedious at times. It took me a bit before I really got rolling, once I finished the first woman's story.
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