Condemn Me Not: Accused Of Witchcraft by Heather B. Moore

Having read quite a bit about the Salem Witch Trials I was a little trepidacious going in to this book as I was not sure which tack the author was going to take.  There are several theories that have done the rounds over the years over what really happened and what led to the girls accusing seemingly ordinary women of Witchcraft.  There is everything from Religious Fervour, Ergot poisoning, revenge and plain old greed.  This book touches on all but the poisoning theory.

Told from the perspective of the elderly Susannah North we are drawn in to her life by a series of flashbacks to her early years, her meeting and marrying her beloved husband at the ripe old age of 25 and then jumps around in an almost scattergun approach between her present in jail and on trial for Witchcraft and snapshots of her life.  I did find it difficult to warm to the central character, whilst I felt empathy for the position she was in I never felt that I really knew who she was as a person.  There was worryingly little about the trials themselves and what the actual accusations were - yes, there are little pieces from academic research in to the records of the time but little is shown of the trials themselves.  Contrast this with the reports of the jail conditions the accused men and women were held in and we have a much clearer picture.

To be perfectly honest it was quite a dry read and as I found myself becoming immersed in one scene we would suddenly jump to another, happier, time and location and the moment would be lost.  Much of it also reminded me of several programmes I have seen about the Lancashire Witch Trials (local to me) and it seems that there was little difference between them and Salem so I did find myself mentally switching to Lancaster Gaol and the proceedings there rather than in their intended setting.

Not a bad fictionalisation of real life events overall but a little light on detail and characterisation.