The Heretic's Daughter (2008)

The author is a descendent of one of the witches tried and hanged in Salem, MA in 1692. This historical fiction novel is told through the voice of the witch's daughter, Sarah. The story is of her life from childhood to the trial of her mother as well as her own time in prison. Very well writeen, informative, yet told in an easy way. ( )

What a story. I for one do not know so much about the Salem witch trials except that it was ludicrous and before I started to read this book I wasn't sure what it was about (I like it that way) so I discovered it during reading.
The first part was indeed slow but such beautiful woven story I understand why the author wrote it that way. The second part got me on the verge of tears, especially cause you know this really happened.
Once i finished it I immediately went to do a search on Google and found the court trials, also the one from Martha Courier, really interesting. I had planned on giving it 4 stars. well 4.5 but I will go for 5 cause if a writer can make me interested in a subject and I still think of the book once I've finished it and want to know even more she did a great job!

Update. I am re-reading this 3 years later because I discovered that she wrote a sequel.

Read it for a second time and I was crying last night. You know this has really happened and it is so unfair. Great read!
( )

The Salem Witch Trials. That's really the only summary you need for this book.

If you want to finish a book and feel like you hate pretty much the entire human race, pick this up. I was in a foul mood when I finished. There are so many rants I want to go on, I just don't even know where to start. I guess I'll content myself with saying that if you want another strong defense for the separation of church and state, this will give you some pointers. What an absolute travesty in our country's history.

Aside from that, the book was just okay. I think the author, who is related to the "witch" in the book, did what she set out to do, and taught me a few things about the witch trials and made me feel pretty strongly about it. But the story just moved too slow for me. I got too bogged down in the details of everyday life. In another book, I might have been interested. In this one, where I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen already, I just didn't care. I wanted to get on to the real meat of the story, rather than all the build-up. And then once we got to the point, there wasn't a whole lot there that I didn't already know. I read Arthur Miller's [b:The Crucible|17250|The Crucible|Arthur Miller|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166805388s/17250.jpg|1426723] back in high school, and I actually remembered some stuff from it. There was very little actual trial here and a lot of sitting around in the dark. I was disappointed in that.

But if you don't know anything about the trials, or if you know just a little bit and you want to know more, give this a try. You'll definitely learn something. I just can't help but wonder if there is better historical fiction about the Salem Witch Trials out there. ( )

This just wasn't my cup of tea. I thought it was well written, I just didn't like the story. ( )

The first half of Heretic's Daughter was sloooooow. BORING. I know Kent was trying to set the scene, the environment, the period of history and it was informative. I just think it could have been cut down quite a bit. The second half pulled me in and was fascinating and as far as I could tell mostly accurate. I've never read anything about the Salem witch trials from the perspective of someone in the jail and that part was worth the book alone. Even with the ick factor of actual shit on the ground and LICE. Sick. ( )