Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

The widely awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed book Atmospheric Disturbances, written with wit and surprise.

The narrative starts in the German duchy of Württemberg in 1618. The plague is becoming worse. The Holy Roman Empire is filled with distrust and anxiety as the Thirty Years' War gets underway. Katharina Kepler is charged with witchcraft in the tiny village of Leonberg.

The uneducated widow Katharina is well-known to her neighbors for her use of herbal treatments and the success of her offspring, one of which being Johannes, the eldest and famous inventor of the laws of planetary motion and Imperial Mathematician. Anyone would be jealous of that, and Katharina hasn't helped herself by bothering people or being out and about.

Katharina is therefore in trouble when the insane and dull Ursula Reinbold—or the Werewolf, as Katharina refers to her—accuses her of giving her a bitter, witchy drink that caused her to become ill. Her son, the scientist, has to focus on protecting his mother instead of listening to the music of the spheres. A reclusive widower threatened by his own secrets, Simon is Katharina's next-door neighbor and friend, and she confides in him about her side of the story, facing the possibility of financial ruin, torture, and possibly execution.

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, based on true historical records but full of Rivka Galchen's trademark inventiveness, subtle humor, and intellectual fire, is sure to provoke and amuse. This is a tale for our times—the story of how a community gets entangled in mass violence and frenzied terror. Galchen's daring new book poignantly depicts a family and a community torn apart by the state, superstition, and the fatal turbulence of history.