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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 24 |
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Acclaimed first novel
demystifies witchcraft
of TheColumnists.com
While cleaning up and repairing her grandmother's house near Salem, Mass., for eventual sale, Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin begins to realize that she may be the descendant of a long line of females gifted in the art of healing through the use of herbs, potions and...well...magical incantations.
Right. She may be a witch who's just coming into her legacy.
This basic situation forms the core storyline of "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane" (Voice, "$25.99), the widely-praised and popular debut novel by Katherine Howe. But please don't jump to the conclusion that this is a quickie horror thriller retilling the soil already heavily plowed by Anne Rice and others. This is a serious novel that raises solid questions about what witchcraft might really be and why it might be worth much more serious study by scholars.
There's already been a good deal of classy writing done about the insanity of the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th century, including Arthur Miller's much-produced play "The Crucible," which blamed vengeful adolescent girls, whose conspiratorial hysteria, inflamed religious zealots and helped send a large number of harmless women to horrible deaths as witches.
But Howe's story slowly, but surely raises the possibility that some of the "witches" hanged or burned might really have been practicing "medicine" that bordered on the miraculous, practices that were misjudged as evil, perpetrated by Satan through these unfortunate women. The possibility that some of these women possessed arcane knowledge that might have helped humankind is raised--and that their execution meant those valuable secrets died with them.
While Connie searches for the rumored "Physick Book" that may have contained some of these secrets, hoping to use it as a primary source for her doctoral dissertation, she also starts to look for the full story about Deliverance Dane, the martyred woman who supposedly wrote it all down and left it behind for her own daughter, Mercy Dane.
Once she reveals her goal to her campus adviser, Manning Chilton, renowned Harvard scholar, he begins to exert tremendous pressure on her to find that book as quickly as possible. He sees in it the possible hope that it might help him prove his controversial theories about the reality of medieval alchemy and even lead him to the legendary "philospher's stone," the "golden fleece" sought for centuries by alchemists.
Deftly guiding us back and forth through time with occasional "interludes" in the real life of Deliverance Dane, Howe builds considerable suspense as Connie finally understands that she's inextricably tied to the story of Deliverance Dane and so is Grace, her somewhat kooky ex-hippie mom, who makes her living helping people repair their "auras." Though Connie resists some of the notions about being related to a line of "witches," she really starts taking it seriously when her lover, Sam, is placed in a struggle for his life and she realizes some great power may be working against her as she hunts for this elusive bible of witchcraft.
Author Howe, who's deeply involved in her own doctoral studies in American and New England studies, may have discovered her own literary lodestone here. I can't imagine there not being a sequel to her first book about Connie Goodwin and the possible uses she makes of the knowledge passed down from mothers to daughters for centuries in American and, most likely, European families of witches.
Reading "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane" is engaging because it teaches you a great deal about what life was like in 17th century New England and makes you think seriously about some things you may have dismissed as ludicrous before--while at the same time involving you in a deadly race between the forces of good and evil in the contemporary world.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The book cover illustration is courtesy of Voice Books, a division of Hyperion. This column first posted June 29, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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