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Summary
Summary
Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived. Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation descendent of Martha Carrier. She paints a haunting portrait, not just of Puritan New England, but also of one family's deep and abiding love in the face of fear and persecution.
Author Notes
Kathleen Kent lives inDallaswith her husband and son. THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER is her first novel.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. A family's conflict becomes a battle for life and death in this gripping and original first novel based on family history from a descendant of a condemned Salem witch. After a bout of smallpox, 10-year-old Sarah Carrier resumes life with her mother on their family farm in Andover, Mass., dimly aware of a festering dispute between her mother, Martha, and her uncle about the plot of land where they live. The fight takes on a terrifying dimension when reports of supernatural activity in nearby Salem give way to mass hysteria, and Sarah's uncle is the first person to point the finger at Martha. Soon, neighbors struggling to eke out a living and a former indentured servant step forward to name Martha as the source of their woes. Sarah is forced to shoulder an even heavier burden as her mother and brothers are taken to prison to face a jury of young women who claim to have felt their bewitching presence. Sarah's front-row view of the trials and the mayhem that sweeps the close-knit community provides a fresh, bracing and unconventional take on a much-covered episode. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Kent, a tenth-generation descendant of Martha Carrier (who was hanged as a witch in Salem in 1692), personalizes the witchcraft trials in this fictional account by Martha's daughter. Sarah Carrier was just nine years old when she and her three older brothers also were arrested for witchcraft, spending months imprisoned under horrific conditions while following their mother's dictum of admitting the charges against them to escape death. But Martha gave her life maintaining her innocence in the face of lying accusations that were fueled by her sharp tongue, her family's unknowingly bringing smallpox to Andover from their home in Billerica, family disputes (including tensions between a mother and her preadolescent daughter), and grudges between neighbors all at a time when any negative event was thought to be the work of the devil in human form. Kent brings history to life in this vivid, sometimes wrenching account of a child and her family sustained by love through the hysteria of the time. An illuminating literary debut.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A historical novel of Salem, Mass., by the descendant of a 'witch.' TEENAGE girls can be real nightmares. Hogging the bathroom. Texting during dinner. Getting a bunch of innocent people executed. There's a lot of drama, and this is nothing new. Back in 1692, a posse of original mean girls got Salem and its surrounding villages in a dither when the girls began accusing townsfolk of being witches. When the dust cleared, 19 people had been hanged, including Martha Carrier, a wife and mother of five, who had steadfastly and courageously maintained her innocence. Kathleen Kent is a 10th-generation direct descendant of Martha Carrier, and Kent's first novel, "The Heretic's Daughter," describes the Carrier family's Very Bad Year. Granted, the based-on-my-family-history novelization is too often a product of a weekend writers' workshop and the misplaced belief that the stories Grandpa told are immensely, immensely interesting. Maybe that's just jealousy talking. Why couldn't any of my ancestors have gotten themselves hanged as witches? But "The Heretic's Daughter" overcomes this and several other obstacles (Puritans are not the sexiest characters). It is a powerful coming-of-age tale in which tragedy is trumped by an unsinkable faith in human nature. Here is where Kent makes a clever choice. The narrator of the book is not Martha but her daughter Sarah (she is 9 and 10 through much of the novel), whose "flaming hair and spotted face" bespeak her "suspicious and prickly nature." She's Scout Finch meets Anne Shirley, with a cap and collar. Sarah has problems. Her parents are totally boring. Her mother's strict. Her dad's always hunting. Her little sister is a pest. And then there was that whole smallpox epidemic that her brother may have brought to town. Like "The Crucible," "The Heretic's Daughter" uses the Salem witch hunt to explore larger themes - most notably, the loss of civil liberties in times of terror - but at its core, it's a story about a family. Sarah longs for a new one. Kent paints an era defined by fear. Of strangers. Of plague. Of Indian raids and cold winters. Men have scars from morally ambiguous battles. Children are kidnapped by Indians and then sold into indentured servitude by their rescuers. "Young women carried sharp blades within their bodices and aprons," Kent writes, "not to kill a raider, but to open their own veins rather than submit bodily to their abductors." But even in the darkest times, the children run free. "We had been told to stay within a gunshot's distance of the house," Sarah recounts, a distance today's parents might find a little generous. Sarah and her family live in Andover, Mass., but they never fit in. And it is for this that they are punished. "Camp dogs will fight and tear at one another for days until a stranger comes too close to the fire," Kent writes, "and then they will turn as one and attack the intruder. And the world was full of intruders." Sarah's mother, sharp-tongued and stubborn, alienates her neighbors, and they turn on her. When Martha is taken before the dread magistrate Cotton Mather, she does not throw herself on the mercy of the court, as so many did to save their lives. She stands up for the truth. Her children are arrested soon after, her sons tortured until they implicate her. It is in the dark, rank confines of the Salem jail that Sarah comes to realize the strength of her family's bond, and something perhaps even more shocking: her parents aren't as uncool as she thought they were. Chelsea Cain is the author of the thrillers "Heartsick" and "Sweetheart."
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Told from the point of view of young Sarah, the daughter of one of the first women to be accused, tried, and hanged as a witch in Salem, this novel paints a vivid and disturbing picture of Puritan New England life. Based on fact and the author's family history, the story portrays Martha, Sarah's mother, as a strong-willed nonconformist who knows she is a target of the zealots who pit family members against one another with their false accusations. All but one of the siblings end up imprisoned with their mother, and much of the story is told from the inhumane and corruptly run jail. When Martha is finally executed, her husband "would stand for all of us so that when she closed her eyes for the last time, there would be a counterweight of love against the overflowing presence of vengeance and fear." History is brought to life as readers learn of the strength of Martha's convictions and the value she places on her conscience. They will also appreciate the themes of family love, repression, intolerance, and persecution in this beautifully written and compelling first novel.-Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A first-time novelist recreates her family's involvement in the Salem witch trials. On August 19, 1692, Martha Carrier was hanged. She was one of the first women convicted of witchcraft amidst the hysteria that started in Salem and spread throughout Massachusetts. Kent is a tenth-generation descendent of Carrier, and, in this novel, she looks at this troubled time through the eyes of Martha's daughter. As Sarah Carrier tells her story, she creates a vivid portrait of the harsh, hard-headed woman who was her mother. When the story begins, Sarah begrudges her mother's stubbornness and severity. She knows that the neighbors resent Martha's sharp tongue, and Martha's unyielding attitude toward her sister's husband means that Sarah is separated from her beloved cousin. When petty village feuds turn into whispered rumors about Martha's dealings with the devil, Martha remains steadfast in her protestations of innocence, and Sarah learns that her mother's willfulness is the product of integrity, courage and fierce individuality. Sarah learns, in fact, that the very qualities that condemned her mother redeemed her as well. The story Kent tells--of a powerful woman punished by a society that fears and hates women--is not a new one. It's not a bad one, either, but this particular iteration is not one of the most compelling. One problem is that Sarah is one of the less remarkable characters in the novel. Both her parents are substantially more intriguing and would have made for dynamic central characters. In fact, Kent seems to have a general problem with distinguishing between the interesting and the uninteresting. The pace of her narrative slows to a crawl, offering lyrical, metaphor-laden, mostly unilluminating descriptions of the natural world. And her practice of breaking the novel into little sections that inevitably end on a portentous note give the story a leaden, numbing rhythm. Serviceable, if unexciting, historical fiction with a feminist perspective. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
History is more than facts and figures; it's something that happens to all of us. That's the thought that may strike readers of Kent's luminous first novel, set at the time of the Salem witch trials. In fact, Martha Carrier, Kent's grandmother back nine generations, was hanged as a witch in 1692. As portrayed here by her daughter, Sarah, Martha is a proud, stubborn, prickly woman, unbending in her beliefs and uninterested in public opinion. When Sarah returns to her family, having been sent away with a little sister because one of her brothers has the plague, she's not sure she wants to go back to her cold mother and dour, seven-foot father, who has some mysterious connection to Cromwell. But when malicious girls start pointing fingers, neighbor turns against neighbor, and Martha is told she will be arrested for witchcraft, she will not run, and she will not make a false confession. But Martha tells Sarah that when she is interrogated about her mother's activities, she must lie to save herself. Amidst the painful details of jail and persecution, deep-seated suspicion and familial betrayal, it is this powerful act of love that crowns the book. Highly recommended.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
