Susannah Morrow

Sometimes I wonder what life must have been like for those living in Salem village in 1692. From the modern standpoint, it can be difficult to accept that these people could have been so easily swept away by what is now viewed as mass hysteria and rampant superstition. To me the value of books like Susannah Morrow is that they examine the impact of such unbelievable episodes on the lives of a few ordinary people. Chance's approach, to tell aspects of the story from the perspective of 3 members of one family, provides insight into how what happened could happen. Charity, the first narrator, has just suffered the loss of her mother and is struggling with grief and her own emerging sexuality. Her conflicts are those of the adolescent. Lucas is also struggling with his wife's death and the allure of his newly arrived sister-in-law, Susannah, who is surrounded by an aura of mystery and who possesses the warmth of spirit that so frightened the Puritans. He is a man who recognizes his own sexual needs but views them as sinful. Finally, Susannah herself, a freer thinker who badly wants to embrace her new family but can't manage to crack that Puritan shell surrounding them. Loss is the central theme of this novel. Loss of loved ones, loss of one's own spirit, loss of personal and community control, loss of logic and reason and trust. Susannah Morrow helps the modern reader to suspend the 21st century mindset and view life from the perspective of those living in a wild, poorly understood environment both natural and of their own making. This is no historical romance, but a nice piece of historical fiction.

Megan Chance has taken the true incident of the Salem Witch Trials and woven an excellent story around the events. Susannah Morrow is an outstanding piece of historical fiction coupled with suspense as we watch the descent into hell of a village and its occupants. Susannah arrives in Salem Village on the night her sister, Judith, dies in childbirth. Susannah is a attractive and flambouyant, and possesses a somewhat murky past that definitely includes several lovers and possibily a stage career. Needless to say, she doesn't fit in well with the local villagers, though she decides to stay in Salem in order to take care of her sister's widower and his three daughters. As the story progresses, Charity, the eldest daughter, comes to believe her mother's specter is telling her that Susannah is evil; this idea is only reinforced for Charity when she begins to sense the growing attraction between her father, Lucas, and her aunt. Charity, desperate to fit in, begins hanging around with some girls of questionable character, and when they begin to "see" witches, she allows herself to be led into the madness. We watch in stunned silence as Charity herself begins to accuse innocent women and men, and we see the village collapse upon itself as the rumors and accusations grow wilder. Chance has taken a dark time in America's early history and made it come alive through her tight writing and her excellent use of overlapping points of view. This book will keep you turning the pages until you reach the end, tired and satisfied. Highly recommended.

Although I have read alot of book set during the Salem Witch Trials, this one still stands out to me. Susannah Morrow is a great book, filled with intrigue, seduction, sexual tension, jealousy, and of course accusation. Meghan Chance did a wonderful job giving voices to this characters, based on actual people. This is an all together satisfying book.

The hysteria over witchcraft that enveloped Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 endures as one of the most riveting and horrific episodes in our collective past. Before it was over, 19 people were hanged as witches and one man was pressed to death. Hundreds more were imprisoned in hellish conditions while the British crown confiscated their property. The event has inspired a slew of novels, movies and nonfiction tomes. But with SUSANNAH MORROW: A Novel of Salem, Megan Chance makes this well-trod historical ground look fresh. The novel blends factual and fictional characters to build a mesmerizing portrait of a society strangled by misguided religious fervor, sexual repression and emotional alienation. Chance's deft use of detail and archaic speech patterns anchor the story, giving it weight and authenticity. At its heart, though, this is not a novel of history or social mores, but an intimate love story. It's three main characters --- 15-year-old Charity Fowler, her father Lucas and her aunt Susannah Morrow --- take turns telling the story in first person. The narrative focuses on them, never stepping back to allow a broader view of the events. The story opens with Charity watching as her mother, Judith, lay bloody and dying moments after giving birth. Her father rushes in from the storm. He has brought Judith's sister, Susannah. The two have not seen each other for 17 years, but their connection is palpable as Susannah leans over her sister. "But then, my mother smiled and it was not a feeble smile like the ones she'd given me or my father," Charity observes. "It was the first real smile I'd seen on her face since the labor had begun and with it came a light in her eyes that stunned me, that raised a blinding hope in my own soul." A few minutes later, Susannah removes the hood of her cloak, revealing a beauty the reader instantly recognizes as dangerous --- even though Charity does not. "She was so beautiful that for a moment I fancied 'twas not the fire's gold she was reflecting but some light that came from inside her, something so bright that I suddenly knew where my mother had found the will to birth the baby. She had caught some of that spirit in Susannah Morrow's face. I wondered that it had not been enough to keep her alive." Susannah is not just beautiful, but sensual, mildly irreverent and scented with the seductive hint of a disreputable past. That she is also nurturing, perceptive and loyal tends to get lost on the women who envy her and the men who lust after her. Among those men is Lucas, a man so hell-bent on righteousness he fears the sin of looking at his own daughters with pride. When he finally gives in to his desire for Susannah --- and then repeats the lapse a number of times --- it's sexy in a way only resisted passion can be. Here the prose approaches romance territory, stopping just short of slipping into it. Says Lucas, "I braced my hands on the edges of the barrel and rocked her until the lid became unsettled and I felt the bee

The year is 1691 in Salem Village, Massachusetts, and fifteen-year-old Charity Fowler's mother, Judith, is encountering difficulty in childbirth. Lucas, Charity's father, must brave the weather to go to town to await the arrival of Susannah Morrow, Judith's sister. Upon the death of Judith, Susannah acts as a mother figure to Charity and her six-year-old sister, Jude, while the baby Faith is nursed at neighbors. But Charity once again befriends the girls that her mother had warned her away from. Even as these girls pretend to practice harmless tricks and gather to whisper stories, rumors of witchcraft abound. And when these same young women appear to be possessed by the devil, they begin pointing accusatory fingers at so-called witches with Susannah's name at the forefront. The complexity of this tale is compounded by Charity's guilt over a secret her mother took to the grave as well as Lucas' inexplicable attraction to Susannah. This crafty mix of fact and fiction eerily details the almost unbelievable widespread hysteria caused by the devious actions of a few young girls. The true beauty of Ms. Chance's novel is that she has chronicled this story in such a way that shows that characters' actions are timeless and have repeated themselves in similar scenarios throughout history.