Normally, I don't have a great interest in witches, witchcraft, or even the Salem history about them. But this book is so well written that it really has whetted my interest to find out more. While not exclusively historical fiction, it is fictional and does have as its central theme witchcraft and the question of whether it was responsible for the events that occurred in Salem Massachusetts in the late 1600's.

Connie Goodwin, a PhD candidate at Harvard, is trying to define the topic she will develop for her dissertation. As summer opens, her mother, living in the Southwest, phones to ask Connie to please spend the summer cleaning out her dead grandmother's vacant but furnished house in Marblehead. Urged on by an academic advisor whose motives become more suspect as the story unfolds, she begins her dissertation research at the same time she moves to the house. While there, Connie discovers that the house has no electricity, no phone, a mountain of grime encrusted furniture, a collection of filthy bottles, and a jungle-like yard, completely hiding the house from the road.

The principle discovery on her grandmother's shelves is a Bible and key. Inside the key, there is a tiny curled piece of paper with the name Deliverance Dane. Connie's search for information about "Livvy" Dane leads her to various libraries, archives, auction houses, as she becomes more and more anxious to find Dane's missing 'receipt' book. In the process, she meets Sam the steeple climber who is an old house restoration expert.

Howe skillfully interweaves the story of Deliverance and her decendants -- and the story of her book-- with the present day story of Connie and her immediate antecedants -- and the story of her search for the book in alternating chapters. We are lead inexorably to a climax where evil, romance, reconciliation, and historical conformation all meet. We are also lead to the ultimate question "Is Connie a witch? Does she possess certain mysterious powers she's only now discovering?" We are left to decide on our own. This was a powerful, emminently readable, and exciting book: one I highly recommend.

Howe gives us a short but interesting list of sources to get us started on our own quest to find out more. ( )

The Physick Book of Delieverance Dane begins with main character Connie Goodwin stessing over the oral exam that will determine whether she will be allowed to continue on as a student for her doctorate. Connie is a historian and the book is about witchcraft and witches (and Connie) so it's not much of a surpirse that this is the first time the subject is broached. But it is done well and doesn't stick out, either, it blends in with the questioning.

With chapters alternating between the late seventeenth/early eighteenth centuries and the summer of 1991, The Physick Book, tells both Deliverance Dane and Connie's story--that of the Salem witches and a modern day historian trying to uncover one of their untold tales.

It's obvious-or at least apparent-that the author herself is a PhD candidate (in American and New England studies), though. Most of the time that is good: the descriptions of the people and times of the 'ancient' chapters were great and all the little details and knowledge of academia and what Connie would encounter in her research did a pot to make the book more enjoyable and realistic. There were a few times, however, that it seemed like there was a little too much...school thrown in? I'm not really sure how to explain it.

The story is kept from being dull by, well, the story. As Connie is on her quest, she's also cleaning up her grandmother's abandoned house for her hippie-ish mother and interacting with some fun secondary characters; it's not just 'research. 1692. research. 1692. repeat'. The tale moves along as well as, or better, than most other books that are not at all informational or historical in the slightest.

The two things I would say detracted from me really, really loving the novel were the author's need to write out accents/dialects (When people had Bostonian accents, they were spelled out- heah instead of here-for entire sentences. The same was true for some of the 16/1700s characters.) While I do think that would be fun for the audio book-which is also available today-most of the time it was just distracting in the print book. Kate Chopin wrote the same way in a few of her stories and it might be that I just have a problem reading things spelled phonetically, but for ways different that I pronounce them. (Some of the writing done from the 16/1700s was spelled...differently and that I was okay with, mostly.)

The only other reason I'm taking any 'points' down is because I wasn't terribly connected to the characters. I know a lot of it was a plot book, but there were still a lot of characters that if part of the story had been they'd jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't have been terribly sad (except for the lack of it making sense). That's not to say there were any of them I didn't like, I just didn't particularly care about them either. ( )

In The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe creates an interesting story about an always intriguing subject—the Salem witch trials. Flowing between “present” day (1991) and the 17th century, Howe develops an incredible story about Deliverance Dane, a woman accused of witchcraft, and Connie, a grad student who becomes swept into her story after finding a piece of paper with Deliverance Dane written on it. Connie comes across the paper at her Grandmother’s house—which she is spending the summer cleaning—and it sparks an interest to know more.

Although the book was a bit predictable at parts, I was completely enthralled from cover to cover. Howe’s writing is beautiful. I love the way Connie views her mind as a library, picking a file to look under when she needs to remember something. She also visualizes things in such a fascinating way, which really helped the story coming to life.

It was strange for me to get used to the fact that Connie didn’t have a cell phone—which would have been an easy fix to her having to use a payphone because the house was not wired for a phone…or electricity. I couldn’t help but laugh when, on page 169, I read:

“One of them had his gigantic cellular phone that he kept on his desk! What kind of high schooler has a cellular phone anyway? Aren’t those just for bankers?”

I just had to remind myself it was 1991 and even though it seemed like she was living in my time right now, a lot has changed since then.

The entire story was so interesting. I love Howe’s writing style and I look forward to reading more from her. ( )

I chose to read this book as my Halloween read this year, as the story has its roots in witchcraft and the Salem witch trials of 1692. Connie Goodwin, a young academic, is asked by her mother to sort out her late grandmother's house, which has stood empty for 20 years. In doing so, Connie finds a key in a bible, and a parchment wrapped within the key, with the name Deliverance Dane written on it. Intrigued, Connie starts to investigate and finds out that at one point a book of recipes, or spells, was once in existence and she sets about trying to find it.

When I started this book I was a little disappointed at the quality of the writing, which is at times rather pedestrian and obvious. However, the story is extremely absorbing and more than made up for any of my minor disappointments, and I really enjoyed reading it.

Although the identity of the villain of the piece is quite clear from early on in the story, I still found myself racing to the end of the book to find out what happened and whether Connie would be able to break a curse that exists in her family. I also particularly enjoyed the odd chapter that was set in 1692 and sometimes later, about Deliverance and her ancesters, which were interspersed within Connie's own story.

An interesting and enjoyable read, and one which I would definitely recommend. ( )

This has got to be the BEST book I have read so far this year. It starts out with Connie working to get her professorship. Here we meet some important characters in the story. Connie's mother Grace cons her into taking care of Grannies old house that has been vacant for 20 years. Connie has to clean it out and get it ready for sale. The house has no electricity or phone and is practically overgrown with weeds. While going through the items in the house she finds reference to Deliverance Dane. Her journey in finding out about this particular person takes her through the Salem witch trials and the aftermath of that time period. This book was riveting! I could not put this book down. There is a lot of historical facts that I wasn't aware of, along with the excitement of getting to know exactly who the accused were and what they were really like. The story was well told with a lot of truthful facts thrown in along with some embellishments to add to the story. As it turns out, Katherine Howe was related to one of the accused witches from Salem which I found quite interesting. If you want to read a really good book, one that will keep your attention, one that will get you thinking - you must read this book. I recommend it hightly. ( )