The Witch of Blackbird Pond | Musings of the Monster Librarian

I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 (Dear America) by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Scholastic, 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0545311656

Available: Used hardcover, Kindle edition

I Walk in Dread is part of the Dear America series, which consists of fictional first-person narratives in diary format by girls between ages 9-14, in a variety of historical time periods. This particular book is the diary of Deliverance Trembley, an orphaned 12 year old girl living in Salem, Massachusetts in 1691, at the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Deliverance and her sickly older sister, Mem, are hiding a secret– their uncle, who is also their guardian, has left them on their own, with instructions to tell no one that he is gone. While Deliverance is definitely a girl of her time, she also, unlike most others, can read and write, both of which are considered tools of the Devil. Her dreams are disturbing, and her interactions with actual historical figures are varied. For instance, she worries that Sarah Goode, who she knows only by reputation, is a witch who has cursed her chickens, but still lets her and her daughter into the house during a cold night. She’s acquainted with many of the major players, but not intimate with them, with the exception of Martha Corey– an observer who is unsure what to think, and afraid of being found out.

Martha Corey is portrayed as an intelligent, kind, and God-fearing woman who keeps her own counsel. She is observant enough to notice that Deliverance and Mem are alone, and asks Deliverance to read aloud to her, allowing Deliverance to earn enough to feed herself and her sister. Martha’s wise conversation and good character are evident to Deliverance, and when Martha is accused, Deliverance becomes certain that the accusations of the afflicted girls are unjustified. Her behavior as the examinations progress even causes her sister to believe that Deliverance is a witch. It is a compelling story, as minor details like the ability to read and write, a fight with her sister that ends with a Bible sliding into the fire, strange dreams, and a refusal to attend the examinations all together take on an ominous cast as the story continues and the hysteria builds.

While some aspects of the story are implausible (it’s difficult to believe that in over three months, no one actually figured out that the girls were living at home without supervision), the author worked hard to develop a historically accurate representation of the time, place, and events of the witch trials, and I think she succeeded. The back matter includes a historical note, reproductions of primary source documents, an author’s note, and acknowledgments, all to create a more complete picture and provide historical background for young readers this is true for all books in the Dear America series). Fraustino does a good job of humanizing the accused, with her detailed character development of Martha Corey, and of expressing the confusion and conflicted feelings a young girl living in Salem but outside the main events of the story could be feeling about her peers, authority figures, and members of the community. For children, especially girls, who are not quite ready for a more graphic discussion, but are interested in the Salem Witch Trials, this is a good starting place. Adults who like a compelling story may like it, too. Appropriate for grades 4 and up.

Reader’s advisory note: Historical fiction readers looking for more might like The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. A possible nonfiction follow-up for those interested in more detail is Witches! The Absolutely True Story of the Disaster in Salem. by Rosalyn Schanzer.

Or, for a list of books for varying ages (with varying levels of appropriateness) related to the Salem Witch Trials, check out this book list.

“Are you a good witch, or a bad witch”? That’s the first question Dorothy is asked when she arrives in Oz. Kind of a bewildering question even if you haven’t just had your house blown into a magical country by a tornado and recovered from a bang on the head. Of course, the answer to that question is decided pretty quickly, since her house has squashed the Wicked Witch of the East. But that’s the way decisions seem to be made when it comes to judging who’s a witch and who is not. Lucky Dorothy managed to gain the support of the people of Oz, but that pendulum usually seems to swing in the opposite direction. And in America, the most notorious example, although not the only one, happened in Salem, Massachusetts.

Even children know the story of the Salem Witch Trials, and if they don’t, they really should. Any community can be shaken up by mass hysteria, the source of the horrific events that took place in this quiet New England town, and with the presence of social media in our midst, it can spread faster and further than ever before. Witch hunts are certainly no longer just the province of the superstitious. For a really excellent, accessible, and gorgeously illustrated historical account of the Salem Witch Trials, I recommend seeking out Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Story of the Disaster in Salem. While the target audience is really older children and young adults, this is a great choice for general readers of any age. A great follow-up title is the Newbery winner The Witch of Blackbird Pond. That award is an award for excellence: don’t let the fact that it’s an award for children’s literature stop you from reading it (Kit, the protagonist, is sixteen). While it’s set in Connecticut in the early 1600’s, it does a great job of bringing home how personal and irrational these persecutions could be. It’s a memorable title you won’t be sorry you’ve read.

It’s hard to talk about Salem without bringing up Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. This is probably the first play I ever saw (my aunt was in it, in the dancing scene at the beginning). While it’s short, it surely makes an impact (it has been made into an opera, and may be the shortest opera I have ever seen). The play brings to life the Salem Witch Trials and the hysteria that accompanied them. The Crucible, written in the 1950s during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, is, under its surface, a rather pointed allegory about the “witch hunts” against supposed Communists that occurred during that time. Miller demonstrated exactly what I wrote about above: that incitement to mass hysteria is no longer limited to the superstitious, and any of us can become a target at any time. There’s an excellent movie adaptation of The Crucible, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, as well. It’s frequently used in American Literature classes to engage students’ interest in the play, which is generally required reading for those classes (Want to give required reading pizzazz? Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder can do that). I haven’t seen this next movie, but The Salem Witch Trials, originally a miniseries on CBS, and starring Kirstie Alley and several other notable actresses, is supposed to be a very good fictionalized version of the events of that time.

Authors have taken varied approaches to the events of the Salem Witch Trials and to witch hunts in general. One surprise is Robin Cook’s medical thriller Acceptable Risk, which involves a subplot with one of the main characters discovering she is related to a Salem witch. I don’t know that you can say that Robin Cook is actually a good writer, but he is a compelling and memorable one– books of his that I read in high school still stick with me. I constantly hear complaints from my dad that there are no good medical thrillers out there anymore, so why not take this chance to resurrect what is admittedly a rather elderly title?

More recently, Alexandra Sokoloff produced Book of Shadows, a supernatural thriller/police procedural that involves a contemporary witch living in Salem, who gets involved in helping a police detective solve the mystery of the murder of a college student that appears to have Satanic overtones. While not directly tied to the original trials, I happen to enjoy Sokoloff’s books, and many readers who normally skip over witch-themed horror may find themselves drawn in to this. And within just the past few months, the last book in Melissa de la Cruz’s trilogy Witches of East End, Winds of Salem, was released. While the image above is of the first book in the series, the second, Serpent’s Kiss, and the third, Winds of Salem, have a strong thread involving the Salem Witch Trials. With Witches of East End just coming out as a television series, including these books in a display on the Salem Witch Trials is a great way to draw readers in to a witchy world as Halloween approaches. These books are more urban fantasy than horror, but paranormal lovers will get right into them.

Witch hunts haven’t been limited to Salem and its environs, though. Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, a non-fiction graphic novel by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, with shocking and effective artwork by Greg Chapman, also details witch hunts in Europe, from the time of the Black Death through the Reformation and finally to the Enlightenment. With torture and burning witches alive being methods often used by witch hunters, you can imagine what the artwork must be like. The book, written by Lisa Morton and Rocky Wood, noted scholars in horror non-fiction, treats its topic respectfully and seriously, and won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Graphic Novel.

The movie Season of the Witch does not pretend to be a serious, non-fictional account of the Burning Times in Europe. It does take place in Europe, during the Middle Ages, at a time when accusations of witchcraft were very serious. Two former knights, played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, are assigned to escort a young woman to an abbey to face accusations of witchcraft. It’s not a great movie, but it’s entertaining, and keeps you guessing as to whether the woman the two men are escorting actually is a witch.

There are a lot of other books, movies, and other materials on witches out there, so maybe I’ll come back to the topic again, but I think this is a good collection to get those interested in Salem, witch hunts, and witchery in general, started on that TBR pile.