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Loading... The Last Witchfinder (2006)by James Morrow
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book can only be described as historical fantasy. Morrow uses the horrific history of witch finding from England to America through the character of Jennet Stearne who spends her life trying to come up with a grand argument that would legally undermine witchfinders, the livelihood of her father and brother. Along the way, she is abducted by Algonquin Indians, shipwrecked with Ben Franklin, and accused of witchcraft herself. The narrator is Newton's Principia Mathematica, the text that Jennet used for her argument, and in the interludes, the book describes its battle against the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch hunting handbook. Here's where fantasy really takes over. The writing was rich and evocative, often ironic, and sometimes just fun. no reviews | add a review
Jennet Stearne's father hangs witches for a living in Restoration England. But when this precocious child witnesses the horrifying death of her beloved Aunt Isobel, unjustly executed as a sorceress, she makes it her life's mission to bring down the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. A self-educated "natural philosopher," Jennet is inspired in her quest by a single sentence in a cryptic letter from Isaac Newton: "It so happens that in the Investigations leading first to my Conjectures concerning Light and later to my System of the World, I fell upon a pretty Proof that Wicket Spirits enjoy no essential Existence." Armed with nothing but the power of reason and her memory of Isobel's love, Jennet cannot rest until she has put the last witchfinder out of business.--Publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Highly recommended. ( )