Aktion	Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Frist	Vorbestellungen
Vorbestellen	Zweigstelle: 07., Urban-Loritz-Pl. 2a	Standorte: GK.RH Gask / College 2d - Geschichte	Status: Verfügbar	Frist:	Vorbestellungen: 0
Vorbestellen	Zweigstelle: 10., Laxenburger Str. 90a	Standorte: FS.E GK.RH Gask Gask	Status: Verfügbar	Frist:	Vorbestellungen: 0

Contents

 

Author's Note xi

Maps xiii

Principal Characters xvii

Introduction xix

 

1. A Voice That Said 'Death' 1

2. Here We Must Be Happy 27

3. Temptations of Desire 52

4. Sleeveless Errands 76

5. I Hear My Child Is Dead 100

6. Strange Dreams 124

7. That Dumb Dog 148

8. Converse with the Devil 171

9. New Witchland 195

Epilogue: An End to All Affection 220

 

Acknowledgements 231

Sources and Methods 233

Notes 235

Index 291

 

 

In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons the irascible brickmaker and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall.

 

The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death.

 

Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world.

 

'Gaskill tells this deeply tragic story with immense empathy and compassion, as well as historical depth' The Guardian

 

'As compelling as a campfire story ... Gaskill brings this sinister past vividly to life' Erica Wagner, Financial Times