Book review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
In Kathleen Kent's debut novel, Sarah Carrier, the daughter of a woman hanged for witchcraft in Massachusetts, recounts the story of the Salem witch hunts.
By telling the Salem story through the eyes of one child, Kent does a good job in making these historical events real and immediate. The characters are complex; only one, the family servant, is presented as thoroughly evil. Sarah's understanding of her family grows as she does. Her mother is presented initially as unloving and unpleasant, and her father as remote, but as we learn about their motives we grow to sympathize with them. Likewise the family of relatives go from angels of mercy to enemies to - in one case, a martyr and savior of sorts.
A page turner with a little meat to it, and characters that breathe. What's not to like?
Side note: one thing I learned while reading the book is that torture is not necessarily an effective way to get at the truth. Imagine that.
