About the Book

Salem Massachusetts, 1692

From her side the fatal key,

Sad instrument of all our woe, [Sin] took;

… then in the keyhole turns

Th’ intricate wards, and every bolt and bar

Of massy iron or solid rock with ease

Unfastens…

She opened, but to shut

Excelled her power; [hell’s] gates wide open stood…

--John Milton

Paradise Lost

Not to believe in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies.

--Heinrick Kramer & James Sprenger

The Malleus Maleficium

Only fifteen years of age, Charity Fowler has lost too much; her mother in childbirth and her illusions about love to a young man who broke her heart. Her stern Puritan father has withdrawn from his family; and her aunt, Susannah Morrow, who has just arrived from London, is struggling to find her place in the family.

But it quickly becomes clear that Susannah has chosen the wrong time to be a part of this rigidly religious community. Her beauty, independence and obvious sensuality challenge its established ways—and when a red bodice, an object of sin in Salem, is found in her trunk, rumors sweep through the village that Susannah has been an actress … or worse. As the suspicions against her mount, the fanaticism, repressed emotions and sexual guilt in Salem explode into a form of hysteria that will make its name infamous and touch everyone she loves.

Her impressionable niece Charity will have to come to grips with or be controlled by her deepest fears. Charity’s father will have to choose between his terror of temptation and his feelings for the woman who questions the beliefs at the core of his life. And Susannah herself must face condemnation and the horror of the witch trials.

Peopled by real-life figures including Elizabeth Proctor, Judge Danforth, and the spell-casting West Indian slave Tituba; and expertly capturing the rhythms and cadences of seventeenth-century colonial life, SUSANNAH MORROW is both a timeless parable on good and evil and a luminous love story.