Daughters of the Witching Hill

Daughters of the Witching Hill

2010 • 333 pages

Ratings4

Average rating4.3

15

The first half of the book is from the point-of-view of Mother Demdike, an elderly healer in mid 1500s through early 1600s Lancashire, England. She gains a familiar and uses the knowledge and magic of now-illegal Catholic rites (this is during the reign of Protestant Elizabeth I) and other charms to help her small village survive during famine and the hard life of every-day Tudor England peasants. Her son marries and moves away with his family while her daughter, born out-of-wedlock and with a lazy eye, is seen as evil by the superstitious villagers but Demdike gains their trust by being a formidable healer and elder and manages to help them both survive.
The latter half of the book is from the point-of-view of Demdike's granddaughter (from her daughter), who has also been gifted with healing prowess, but which ultimately leads to the village's downfall.
This is a gripping, well-written look into the lives of those who are mostly forgotten (peasants and country-folk of bygone eras) that seems to be very well researched with just enough of the supernatural to make it more than a historical narrative.
As it says in the afterword, it's based off of a real witch trial in Lancashire, which characters based off of the actual women and men who were wrongly accused of witchcraft and subsequently tortured and killed for their “crimes”.

June 27, 2015Report this review