Susannah Morrow

Rating:
Summary: powerfully vivid look at the Salem witch trials
Review: 1691 Salem, Massachusetts, fifteen-year-old Charity Fowler watches her mother grow weaker as she gives birth. Charity's puritanical and pious father Lucas is meeting his sister-in-law Susannah Morrow, who just arrived from England on a visit, at the docks. Lucas and Susannah return to his home in time to see his wife give birth and die. A troubled Charity soon believes that Susannah is evil incarnate as a disciple of the Devil.

Lucas begins to worry about his daughter whose behavior seems weirder everyday. He reads from the bible to soothe her soul, but that seems to upset Charity more. Worse, Lucas is very attracted to Susannah though the memory of his wife fresh in the ground lingers. As hysteria turns a town into an avenging mob seeking anything remotely different, the former London stage performer Susannah is an ideal target. She is accused of witchcraft and incarcerated followed by the jailing of Lucas as a mad frenzy takes charge of the townsfolk.

SUSANNAH MORROW has plenty going for it as a powerfully vivid look at the Salem witch trials. The story line is loaded with historical information that enhances the novel by bringing to life this odd period (though some might disagree insisting that we still conduct witch-hunts today). The three key characters seem fully developed and genuine, yet the tale never fully takes off as the plot overuses suppressed sexual reactions inside of Hawthorne's circles so that the first person narration in three parts never quite hooks the audience. Megan Chance is a talented author who remarkably radiates a light on the late seventeenth century in New England that historical novel fans will feel is worth the chance of reading.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A Subject Out of Its Time and For Our Time
Review: A New Lesson on Old Prejudices

There is a new, young author in town writing serious, readable novels. At least her first is and that is a promise of more to come.

"Susannah Morrow," by Megan Chance is a self-proclaimed "Novel of Salem."
It is the story of a fictional characters set in the history of Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s. The witch hunts are not pretty. They may, however, speak to us several hundred years after a radical and closed society made them part of our heritage.

This story is told from the viewpoints of three different family members. We see a deluded sixteen-year-old plagued by guilt for her indiscretions, her father, Lucas Fowler, who is trying to be a good man but is caught up in mass hysteria, and her aunt who has brought not only her own physical beauty to town but an independence not frequently seen in either men or women in these times.

Sometimes I found both modern motivation and reasoning lacking in this novel and that was troubling. Then I stopped to reflect that it was not the fault of the author but of the subject matter. I also began to wonder if there really is that much of a difference between these characters' actions and much of what we see in the world today. This story is part of our own history. Is what we see there really so different from what we are witnessing in our own world and even our own time?

Perhaps, then, this book is one that is right for this time and this place. Perhaps it is one that will not only entertain but remind us how important it is to guard our separation of church and state, our right to independent thought.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "This is the Place"

Rating:
Summary: A New Twist on the Same Ole Witch Story
Review: I really enjoyed this book. Even though it followed a similar narrative to say, any other novels written about the Salem Witch trials, it held my attention. I thought the pace of the story was good and that the overall writing style was vey good as well.

I think anyone who enjoys a good suspense story with a little historical relevance thrown in will enjoy this novel.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most entertaining novels of the season
Review: 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 beer spilling over my fingers; I smelled the yeast and malt of it, filling the air along with her scent, lemons and musk and sex."

All three of the central characters feel real, but Lucas is the most compelling. Fearful of making his daughters weak, he denies both them and himself the comfort of a touch or tender word. He's so tortured by his feelings for Susannah he convinces himself that she really is a witch when others make the charge.

The book makes no attempt to answer the question that has lingered for 300 years --- what allowed Salem to be gripped by such cruel insanity? This book trades in relationships. Let scholars grapple with the big societal issues.

Susannah's experiences as an accused witch are based on the experiences of several real-life women who were branded as witches. Revealing Susannah's ultimate fate would ruin the fun. That would be a shame, as this is one of the most entertaining novels of the season.

--- Reviewed by Karen Jenkins Holt

Rating:
Summary: Held captive
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly good book.
Review: This novel started off slowly and I almost put it aside. Still, I continued reading and it grasped my full attention somewhere in the middle and I read excitedly until the end.

At first, I didn't know why so much emphasis was placed on the 'friends' of Charity and her obsession with them. Having no knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials, I didn't see what was developing. I thought Charity's perspective was very emotional and her outbursts tiring, but my patience was rewarded. As the novel switched over to the voices of the two adults, Lucas's and Susannah's relationship evolved, Charity was seen in new light, and the suspense began building. It leaves you in the dark about Charity's later activities and keeps you guessing until the end, so read on!

I'm glad I did!

Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly good book.
Review: This novel started off slowly and I almost put it aside. Still, I continued reading and it grasped my full attention somewhere in the middle and I read excitedly until the end.

At first, I didn't know why so much emphasis was placed on the 'friends' of Charity and her obsession with them. Having no knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials, I didn't see what was developing. I thought Charity's perspective was very emotional and her outbursts tiring, but my patience was rewarded. As the novel switched over to the voices of the two adults, Lucas's and Susannah's relationship evolved, Charity was seen in new light, and the suspense began building. It leaves you in the dark about Charity's later activities and keeps you guessing until the end, so read on!

I'm glad I did!