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The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World cover

The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World

Malcolm Gaskill

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awards won

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score

#3430 of 3,809 books · #1071 in History

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize (2022).

In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.

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Publisher
Random House
ISBN-13
9780593467107
Genre
History
Topics
Witchcraft trialsColonial AmericaPuritan society

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