In the Devil's Snare

✍ Scribed by Norton, Mary Beth

• Book ID: 108296699
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 2 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780307426369

✦ Synopsis

In January 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts, two young girls began to suffer from inexplicable fits. Seventeen months later, after legal action had been taken against 144 people--20 of them put to death--the ignominious Salem witchcraft trials finally came to an end.

Now, Mary Beth Norton--one of our most ad-mired historians--gives us a unique account of the events at Salem, helping us to understand them as they were understood by those who lived through the frenzy. Describing the situation from a seventeenth-century perspective, Norton examines the crucial turning points, the accusers, the confessors, the judges, and the accused, among whom were thirty-eight men. She shows how the situation spiraled out of control following a cascade of accusations beginning in mid-April. She explores the role of gossip and delves into the question of why women and girls under the age of twenty-five, who were the most active accusers and who would normally be ignored by male...