Witch-Hunt
I highly recommend this book if you are curious about the known facts of the Salem Witch Trials between February 1692 and May 1693 in colonial Massachusetts. Nineteen were hung, one was pressed to death and another fifty confessed to being witches and so were not executed.
It is a YA book, but it is clear, informative and not childish. It is directed toward teenagers and tries to explain to them how and why this could have happened. I too was dumbfounded. It seems almost incomprehensible that the young accusers behaved as they did. In addition, there is a lot of information out there that is totally false. The author points out the falsehoods. In America, witches were not burned! The book has footnotes, a “Time-line of Milestones in Puritan History”, an index, bibliography and photographs. Don’t expect to see the house where the first trials were held; it doesn’t exist anymore, but there is a photo of the place!
Before reading I had a general idea: mass hysteria, personal gain, revenge and Puritanical beliefs. It can be hard to comprehend how the Puritans thought. The author draws parallels to modern times so we can better understand. We too might behave as those girls did; I am referring to the accusers. Why would the witches, the accused, confess to that which they hadn’t done? We do not have definitive answers, but I agree with the author’s conclusions. He even depicts controversial points of view, both contemporary and historical ones. All of this is convincingly explained. The author looks at the accusers, the accused, the judges and townspeople; all are studied in detail.
Although for the most part the writing is clear and to the point, sometimes it is diffuse and peculiarly “philosophical” in tone. At the end the starts analyzing literature, fiction versus non-fiction which is rather off topic! He points out the errors in Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible,also about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, but then gets all philosophical about its merits. OK, this is in an appendix!
