She needs to actually visit a variety of places and consult a whole lot of potential documents, from church archives to probate records, and when she does find something, she needs to interpret and decode what ambiguous records might mean and imply. She has to follow up on all sorts of sources, and since the book is set in 1991, this doesn't mean just going online and running a few searches. had the present-day protagonist just stumbling on stuff, and then doing nothing more strenuous than reading a diary. The last few books I read with this setup. I also loved that Connie had to do proper detective work to uncover what had gone on in Deliverance's time.

The action takes place mostly in the present, with the sparse sections set at the times of Deliverance and her descendents exactly enough to enrich the investigation and mirror and illustrate some of the developments in Connie's story. I absolutely love the setup of having someone in the present investigating a story from the past, with the action moving between the two periods, but so very few authors do it well and get the balance right. I'm not sorry I read it and I never felt like throwing the book across the room, but really it's an average story encased in an extraordinary jacket. The narrative really ended up feeling like just a listing of events if not for the chapter headings I wouldn't have known if this story takes place over 4-5 months or 4-5 years. It wasn't gripping at all, although as I said, it's not a bad story.Įach chapter head has a time frame on it - 'Late June, 1991' or 'Early August, 1991' but I think my biggest complaint about the story overall is I never got any sense of time passing from the story - the writing is very, very vague in terms of events moving towards their inevitable conclusion. I'm not sure what Matthew Pearl was reading but I don't think it was this book. The cover quote refers to this book as a 'gripping supernatural puzzler'.

It held my attention in a rather detached way and the author did a credible job pulling me into Salem during the late 1600's for the flashback chapters. Well, it's not, but it's not a great story either. candidate finding out about her witchy roots while cleaning out her grandmother's house. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane was an impulse buy at a FOTL sale based on the oh-so-fabulous cover and an ultra-quick scan of the book flap. The upside to buying a book on impulse that you later find out from your BL friends is at best an average read: your expectations are set accordingly.

The lost book of salem katherine howe