The Witches; Salem, 1692

I was very pleased when my husband gave me a copy of Stacy Schiff's latest non-fiction work The Witches; Salem, 1692 (#557) for Christmas.  I've been reserving it to read as a special treat.  In the end, although Ms. Schiff did include quite a bit of interesting information, I did not find that this book lived up to its rapturous reviews.

First of all, if you are looking for a book to introduce you to the events that centered on Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts during 1692 and into 1693, I cannot recommend this book.   This has always been a subject that has interested me, having grown up in the area, and being friends with a descendant of one of the executed "witches".  I know the basic outlines of what happened, but I have to confess that I found Ms. Schiff's account confusing.  I found myself constantly thinking "Huh?"  Just laying out the facts of what happened in this time and place are shocking enough when recounted plainly and would serve as a better platform for Ms. Schiff''s interpretation of the witchcraft ordeal.  The florid language, convoluted sentences and endless looping back to previously introduced people and events made for slow-going and tedious reading, despite her inclusions of pop cultural references.

Actually, speaking of references, that was one of the things I found most curious about this Little, Brown publication.  I am an inveterate reader of footnotes when they contain information that goes beyond the basic bibliographic citations.  That's often where I find some of the more intriguing tidbits which don't quite fit into the main narrative, and can send me off to learn more from other sources.  I don't know if the editors at Little, Brown in their wisdom thought that they would scare off the more general audience this book was aimed at by including the superscripts that lead to those back-of-the-book footnotes, but I was a couple of chapters into The Witches before I realized that there actually were footnotes in this volume.  They're all in the back, neatly numbered with absolutely no correlation to the materials referenced in the chapter!  How frustrating, and a bad decision on the publishers' part as far as this reader is concerned.

It seems in the end that the point Ms. Schiff  wished to make in this book was that the whole incident in Salem could be written off as politics.  While certainly politics did drive the actions of many involved in this episode, I don't think that you can blame the antics of bored, repressed teen-aged girls on politics.  Spite and the associated power that came from having their victims dragged into court played a much stronger role than I think Ms. Schiff credits here.  In fact, if you're at all familiar with this bit of American history, what Ms. Schiff leaves out of this book tells you quite a bit about how she chose to spin her narrative.  I can't recommend this one.