The Witches

Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff,author of the #1 bestseller Cleopatraprovides an electrifyingfresh view of the Salem witch trials. The panic began early in 1692over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winterwhen a minister’s niece began to writhe and roar. It spread quicklyconfounding the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighborshusbands accused wivesparents and children one another. It ended less than a year laterbut not before nineteen men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. Speaking loudly and emphaticallyadolescent girls stood at the center of the crisis. Along with suffrage and Prohibitionthe Salem witch trials represent one of the few moments when women played the central role in American history. Drawing masterfully on the archivesStacy Schiff introduces us to the strains on a Puritan adolescent’s life and to the authorities whose delicate agendas were at risk. She illuminates the demands of a rigorous faiththe vulnerability of settlements adrift from the mother countryperched-at a politically tumultuous time-on the edge of what a visitor termed a \