The Witches: Salem, 1692

The #1 bestselling Cleopatra author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff offers an intriguing, new perspective on the Salem witch trials.

A minister's niece started to writhe and howl in the early months of 1692, during an unusually harsh Massachusetts winter. This sparked the hysteria. It immediately became widespread, confusing the colony's most learned men and well-known politicians. Parents and kids blamed one another, neighbours accused neighbours, and spouses accused wives. It ended in less than a year, but not before an old man was crushed to death and nineteen men and women were executed.

Adolescent girls spoke up loud and clearly, putting them at the centre of the situation. The Salem witch trials are among the rare instances in American history that women were crucial to the political process, along with suffrage and Prohibition. Stacy Schiff brings us to the pressures on a Puritan adolescent's existence and to the authorities whose sensitive agendas were at stake, skillfully drawing from the archives. She sheds light on the strict requirements of a devout religion and the precariousness of communities cut off from their home country and situated, at a period of political unrest, on the brink of what one traveller described as a "remote, rocky, barren, bushy, wild-woody wilderness." The textures and stress of colonial existence emerge with stunning clarity; hidden patterns emerge from the shadows with surprising subtlety. Schiff skillfully aligns the fears of early Americans with our own by bringing them to light. This captivating tale makes more sense than ever at a time of crowdsourcing, unseen opponents, and religious provocations.

The Witches is Schiff's captivating story of a landmark incident, a primordial American mystery revealed by one of our most renowned historians in beautiful style and scintillating detail.