The Witches by Stacy Schiff

After the disaster that was reading The Last Man, I was anxious to get into another book and revive my interest in reading. Next up on my list was The Witches by Stacy Schiff. This nonfiction novel about the Salem witch trials was part of my True Books 2020 Challenge. I had been saving this one until October to read, as it seemed to be a good match for the season. I live close enough to Salem to go there for a weekend, so I was hoping to learn about all about what happened back in 1692, and then go see some of the historical sites. Covid has ruined that plan, at least for now, but I was still interested to learn about this weird part of American history.

The Witches is an extremely detailed account of the hysteria that gripped Salem in 1692 when a group of teenage girls went into strange fits and began accusing their neighbors of practicing witchcraft. As their Puritan community believed wholeheartedly in the existence of witches, the girls' stories were taken seriously and the accused were arrested and put on trial. The Puritan community was soon turned on its head, as more and more accusations were made and more and more "witches" were rounded up and put in prison. Some were prosecuted and were put to death, while others saved themselves by confessing to consorting with the devil and naming other witches for the witch hunters to round up. Neighbors accused neighbors, daughters accused mothers, and husbands accused wives. Before the fervor died down, Massachusetts executed fourteen women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft, and imprisoned many more. The incident tore the community apart and left deep wounds that took generations to heal.

Schiff conveys the story chronologically, starting by giving the reader a picture of how Salem was founded and what it was like to live there in the 1690s. From there, she describes the initial accusations and traces how the fear and suspicion always present in Salem started a runaway sequence of events that led to a lot of innocent people being killed. She discusses the trials themselves, the executions that took place, and the eventual petering out of the mayhem once it became unsustainable. The Salem Witch Trials are one of those events from history that seem unbelievable, but Schiff does a nice job giving as much context and reasoning as possible to explain how it happened.

I learned a lot of interesting things from this novel, but not without a price. This was obviously a well-researched and expertly constructed account, but part of it were very dry. The middle of the story was especially challenging, as it felt like a lot of the same type of information being given over and over. There are only so many accounts of ridiculously false testimony you can read before getting bored. There were also a lot of moments where Schiff detoured into the background of various people, which I felt stopped the momentum of the book. Additionally, there were a lot of names to keep track of, and I found it impossible to keep everyone straight. It wasn't necessary to remember exactly who everyone was to understand the overall narrative, but it did bother me a bit that I couldn't recall who everyone was as I was reading. 

Overall, I did enjoy my experience with The Witches, but I found parts of it difficult to get through. I think that maybe I wasn't in the right mood for another long, dense read after The Last Man, so part of this is my fault. I ended up learning a lot though, so it was a successful experience. I won't remember this as one of my favorite nonfiction reads, but I will definitely remember what I learned about history from it. I am still hoping to visit Salem myself one day, once this Covid nightmare is over. 

Challenge Tally

True Books 2020: 13/14

Total Books Read in 2020: 72