What did people do before they had TVs? The answer is they went witch hunting. This book is set at "the height of the witch craze in England" in the 1640s. The main character is Nell and she becomes the innocent victim of one of these witch hunts, on the verge of being hanged at one point.
The story is in two parts interlinking parts. That of Nell, and the confession of Patience Madden, one of the village minister's daughters. Together they form the story of what happened.
The minister is "a right miserable bogger. A killjoy and a Puritan." So what would he do if one of her unwed daughters got pregnant? He'd cover it up and blame her daughter's period of hiding on a witch, that witch being Nell. But Nell is a merrybegot, "a child sacred to nature", thus has powers on her side to help her survive this victimisation.
The minister enrols the help of Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-Finder General, a character who existed in real life. The other real life figure that features in the story is Charles II. However it is a fictional world with fairies and piskies featuring so any historians wanting to moan about the accuracy of their cameos should not bother.
The book does well to bring out the way it must have been felt to be the innocent victim of a witch hunt, and how powerless women and girls were when more reputable, in the eyes of society, people accused them and worked the locals up into a frenzy to nail them.
The story does fizzle out at the end as all the loose ends are tied up after the main story arc has come to a conclusion, but overall a really enjoyable read.
(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.)
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