She shows us how a band of adolescent girls brought the nascent colony to its knees, and how quickly the epidemic of accusations, trials, and executions span out of control.Īs psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, as magnificently written as it is deeply researched, THE WITCHES breathes new life into one of history's most enduring mysteries. Vividly capturing the dark, unsettled atmosphere of seventeenth-century America, Stacy Schiff's magisterial history draws us into this anxious time. Neighbours accused neighbours, parents accused children, husbands accused wives, children accused their parents, and siblings each other. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. It ended less than a year later, but not before nineteen men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter started to scream and convulse. A Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian explores one of the great mysteries of American history: the Salem witch trials.
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