The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE

by Katherine Howe

Mystery/Thriller
Hyperion - Voice
www.KatherineHowe.com

5 signed copies will be given away on Friday, July 31, 2009

A New York Times Bestseller!



About the Book

A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history-the Salem witch trials.

Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.

As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.

Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.

Interview with the Author!

Read our exclusive interview with author, Katherine Howe!

1) How’d you get the idea to write The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane?

My husband and I moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts from Cambridge in summer 2005, and that November I was scheduled to take my oral exam for the PhD in the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University. The interesting thing about Marblehead, for those who haven’t been there, is that it has one of the most complete collections of extant eighteenth-century American architecture in the country. It’s the kind of place where only a little bit of imagination can erase the power lines overhead and block out the cars parked along the street, and you can start to imagine what life might have looked like in a different moment in time.

Grad students get notoriously nervous leading into their oral exams, and I was no exception. If I went walking and didn’t occupy my mind with something else, I would just turn back to worrying again. So I told myself stories to distract myself. Since Marblehead is only one town over from Salem, we inevitably see a lot of the more commercial interpretations of the Salem witchcraft episode. As an American studies graduate student, however, I knew that the reality of Salem looked very different from the fairy-tale, pointy hats and warty noses version. So I asked myself: if witchcraft were real the way the colonists understood it to be, rather than in our fairy-tale sense, what would it look like? How would it work? What would it be capable of, and not capable of? The story for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which is about a graduate student in history who discovers that one of the Salem witches might not have been so innocent after all, really grew out of that idea.

2) Everyone seems so fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials, even over 400 years later! Why do you think that is?

One of my goals with The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane was to inspire curiosity about the actual history of the Salem period. It’s interesting to me how blurred our understanding of the Salem episode is; for instance, many people take The Crucible to be a historically accurate portrayal of events at the trials, without considering that Arthur Miller took broad liberties with character’s ages and relationships in order to craft a more coherent story. (Of course, I took some liberties, too.) But I wanted to illustrate the fact that the historical truth of witchcraft is very different from the popular fairy-tale notion. I wanted to investigate how the colonists might have felt about witchcraft in their own terms.

I think the most striking detail in studying New England witchcraft is learning what kind of person was likely to be accused. Most accused witches, not just in Salem but in early American history more generally, were quarrelsome women, grumpy, outspoken, bitter, or otherwise disenchanted with their lot in life. Often they had grudges nursed against them for years that only came to light when charges were finally brought against them. It is moving to see how narrowly defined colonial village life really was, how bound up in gossip and jostling for social and economic resources. It’s a powerful reminder about the darker side of the human character. I think, to answer your question, that is one of the reasons we are still so involved in the Salem story today. We want to understand it so that we can understand the darker parts of ourselves.

3) What kind of research on the time period did you have to do to write the book?

I relied on some of the excellent secondary sources that exist about Salem specifically, and about early modern popular magic more generally. Historians such as Paul Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum, John Demos, Mary Beth Norton, Carol Karlsen, Keith Thomas, Owen Davies, David Hall, and Richard Godbeer have all done incredibly detailed work on this period, and I would point anyone curious about the real story of colonial witchcraft to their books (a short bibliography for further reading appears on www.physickbook.com). I also tried to train myself in everyday speech of the period by reading a few linguistics articles, since so much historical fiction is written like an episode of Masterpiece Theatre, as though everyone in the past had perfect diction and no one used slang. For furnishings and details of daily life I used a wonderful exhibition catalogue of early New England decorative arts and material culture that was published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, called New England Begins.

The research took about a year and a half of reading and stewing, and then another year and a half was spent in the outlining and writing of the story. The hardest part was forcing myself to stop researching. There is always more to be learned.

4) It sounds like you’re a big U.S. history buff. What time period in American history would you have most liked to live in?

You know, this might sound strange coming from someone who studies American cultural history and writes about it for a living, but the era I would most like to live in is the present. That's not to say there aren't time periods that I would be fascinated to see in person: the first decade of the 1900s, the first few decades after settlement, the Gilded Age in New York City. But whenever I catch myself feeling nostalgic about a given period of history, I just remind myself of the things we take so thoroughly for granted in our own day: hot running water in the house. Flush toilets. Antibiotics. Universal suffrage. The past was dirty, difficult, and brutal. I, personally, am happy to live the bulk of my life in the twenty-first century.

5) Will you write any more novels after this one? Will they also be historical?

I shall. The one that I am working on right now is also historical fiction with a slightly atypical, mysterious element, set in Boston in 1915, just as the city is starting to resemble its modern-day self. Tentatively called The Scrying Glass, the book will follow another unique New England family as it undergoes a shocking transition. Anyone who enjoys The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane will enjoy The Scrying Glass as well. I am also mulling over plans for a Physick Book sequel, so stay tuned! Anyone who wants to keep up with me can find me at www.katherinehowe.com, or on Facebook (as Katherine Howe) and Twitter (katherinebhowe).

About the Author:

Katherine Howe is completing a PhD in American and New England Studies, and is a descendant of Elizabeth Proctor, who survived the Salem witch trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not. The idea for this novel developed while Howe was studying for her doctoral qualifying exams and walking her dog through the woods between Marblehead and Salem. She lives in Massachusetts, with her husband. For more information, please visit her website at: www.KatherineHowe.com

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