‘Mary Starling of Langham, for the keeping of imps… Helen Leech of Manningtree, for sending an imp against the Parsley child… Margaret Moone of Thorpe-le-Soke, for causing Phillip Daniel’s horse to break its neck while pulling a cart downhill.’ The accusations, to our modern eyes, are ludicrous. He has begun to compile a great book, in which he is meticulously noting down the names of women he suspects of witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins is the self-appointed witchfinder. There had been the Pendle mass executions thirty years earlier in Lancashire where eight women were convicted, but things had calmed down since then. Until now, relatively few women had been hanged for witchcraft two or three per decade. It is 1645 and England is in its fourth year of bloody civil war.
Weird.)īeth Underdown’s novel is set on this side of the Atlantic, almost fifty years before the deadly hysteria in Salem. And you sir, will drown in your own blood.’ (He did too, years later, suffering an aneurism in the night and choking to death as a major artery in his neck ruptured. Sarah was convicted and hanged, but not before telling her chief prosecutor: ‘You, sir, know that I am no more a witch than you are. She was one of the first three women to be accused of witchcraft in the Massachusetts town in 1692. I found this book distinctly unsettling, not least because I am distantly related to one of the so-called Salem Witches – Sarah Good. Read their full reviews below and have a sneak peek at the first chapter of The Witchfinder’s Sister. Richard describes The Witchfinder’s Sister as ‘distinctly unsettling’ whilst Judy notes how ‘Beth Underdown brings us up close and personal to the madness and horror’ of the witch hunts. As Matthew’s obsession grows more and more dangerous, Alice finds herself tangled in his sinister plan.
He’s gained influence in the community and made it his mission to expose women he suspects to be witches. However, Matthew has changed since she’s been away. Set in 1645, Alice Hopkins, Matthew’s fictional sister, is forced to move back to her childhood town of Manningtree after her husband Joseph dies in a tragic accident. Based on the life of the 1640’s witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, Beth Underdown combines fact and fiction to illustrate the disturbing irrationality behind the Essex witch hunts. Beth Underdown/ books/ December 2017/ fictionīeth Underdown’s debut novel The Witchfinder’s Sister is a chilling and vividly haunting pick for the Richard and Judy Book Club Spring 2018.
0 kommentar(er)
