cover image The Devil and the Mathers

The Devil and the Mathers

Edward E. Elliott. Strawberry Hill Press, $16.95 (1pp) ISBN 978-0-89407-095-2

In this diligently researched historical novel about the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials, Elliott ( Hurricanes over Hyannisport ) describes the events, now legendary, that ensue when a bevy of girls accuses a West Indian servant of sorcery. Fueled by townsfolk and overzealous religious leaders, the witchcraft hysteria leads to the executions of a score of the ``minions of Satan.'' Elliott amply demonstrates the religious intolerance of New England's early settlers, limns a few imaginative scenes of defiance by victims, speculates about the motives of the accusers and wraps his investigation in rococo prose: Colonial America is ``a place of broken spars and driftwood, of shattered dreams, where the waves of the moody Atlantic sometimes rolled upon the shore . . . beneath an enchanting moon and in the dark of winter crashed upon the cliffs with unrestrained fury. . . .'' (Sept.)