The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane -- Katherine Howe
Cambridge, Massachusetts: April, 1991. After successfully passing her qualifying exam, Connie Goodwin plans to spend the summer doing preliminary research for her dissertation. Those plans go awry when her mother -- a flighty New Age-r, ever self absorbed and Connie's polar opposite -- asks her to spend the summer in the Salem area. Not for a vacation, oh no. No, Grace has asked that her daughter drop everything and clean out a house that has stood abandoned for the ten years in which her mother (Connie's grandmother) has been dead.
Not just a little bit abandoned: we're talking giant-mushrooms-growing-in-the-hallway abandoned.
Being a bit of a martyr when it comes to her mother as well as at a loss about her dissertation topic, Connie says yes.
Early on in the cleaning, she finds a key in an old Bible. Within the key is a fragment of parchment that reads: Deliverance Dane. That discovery sets Connie on a quest for an as-yet-unstudied primary source about the Salem Witch Trials. But it isn't just a simple academic search (or as simple as a search like that could be). More and more often, Connie sees things that no one else seems to see -- glimpses flashes of the past -- and she isn't sure if she's losing her mind or if maybe there's more to the world than her logical historian self is ready to handle.
In The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, chapters about Connie's present alternate with chapters about Deliverance's, and then, as Connie's search progresses, with Deliverance's descendants. I found it a compelling read, even resorting to Ye Olde Flashlight Under the Blanket to finish it.
I've seen a few complaints about it. Some people, expecting straight historical fiction, were disappointed with the fantasy element that was introduced halfway through. To that, I respond thusly: There is a blurb on the front cover that says "A gripping supernatural puzzler". That's about as up-front as you can get without spoilers -- I really don't think there was a bait-and-switch going on.
I've seen complaints about the amount of description of clothing and furniture in the historical passages -- some people felt that Katherine Howe was shoe-horning her research into her novel. I didn't get that feeling. The details felt natural to me, and I felt that the historical passages actually worked better than the chapters about Connie. It was during Connie's research that I felt the use of the shoehorn. That was where I started picturing the author instead of the character. But all of that, I think, is just a matter of taste.
For me, the historical chapters were much stronger than the contemporary ones -- and it was mostly because of the heroine. Connie falls into one of the more frustrating categories of protagonist: the supposedly super-smart person who remains clueless hundreds of pages after the reader has figured everything out. Like, not being sure of who the villain is until he is LITERALLY standing right in front of her, confessing. Or her inability to make the really obvious leap about Deliverance's line of descent. It's hard to take someone seriously as having a huge brain when she acts really, really dumb. I do think that a good part of her blindness was in character -- she ignored her instincts, and gave her gut little merit -- but knowing that didn't make her any less frustrating.
Like other readers, I was bothered by the (I felt) excessive use of dialect in both time periods. I think much (not all -- in some cases, I really did feel that it was over-the-top) of that feeling is probably also a personal issue -- but it did detract from my enjoyment of the book overall. And there were some broad generalizations about New Englanders (which, if I'm going to be truthful, were pretty accurate) that chafed. But that could be chalked up to the uncomfortable feeling most people would get while reading an anthropological description of their own culture.
So. This was one of those odd reads that I enjoyed more while I was reading than I did upon reflection. That said, though, if she writes another one, I'll give it a try.
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Book source: My local library.
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I read this for the R.I.P. IV challenge.