Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials

Overview

From Printz Honor winner and Your Own, Sylvia author Stephanie Hemphill comes this fictionalized account of the Salem Witch trials from three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692.

Ann Putnam Jr. is the queen bee. When her father suggests a spate of illnesses in the village is the result of witchcraft, she puts in motion a chain of events that will change Salem forever.

Mercy Lewis is the beautiful servant in Ann's house who inspires ...

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Wicked Girls

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More About This Book

Overview

From Printz Honor winner and Your Own, Sylvia author Stephanie Hemphill comes this fictionalized account of the Salem Witch trials from three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692.

Ann Putnam Jr. is the queen bee. When her father suggests a spate of illnesses in the village is the result of witchcraft, she puts in motion a chain of events that will change Salem forever.

Mercy Lewis is the beautiful servant in Ann's house who inspires adulation in some and envy in others. With her troubled past, she seizes her only chance at safety.

Margaret Walcott, Ann's cousin, is desperately in love. She is torn between staying loyal to her friends and pursuing a life with her betrothed.

With new accusations mounting against the men and women of the community, the girls will have to decide: Is it too late to tell the truth?

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Editorial Reviews

Booklist (starred review)
“An excellent supplementary choice for curricular studies of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this will also find readers outside the classroom, who will savor the accessible, unsettling, piercing lines that connect past and present with timeless conflict and truths.”
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“An atmospheric tale.”
The Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books

“An atmospheric tale.”

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“An atmospheric tale.”
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
“An atmospheric tale.”
Booklist
"An excellent supplementary choice for curricular studies of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, this will also find readers outside the classroom, who will savor the accessible, unsettling, piercing lines that connect past and present with timeless conflict and truths."
Library Journal - BookSmack!
In the Puritan world, only slaves and servants had less authority than young, unmarried women, until the day a small group of them cried, "Witch!" Here Hemphill (Printz Honor winner of Your Own, Sylvia) offers her take, in verse, on the key figures and events of the Salem Witch Trials. Avoiding such modern explanations as mass hysteria and ergot poisoning, she instead examines the mean-girl motives of each accuser-one is in love, one wants to please her mother, and one just wants to fit in. When their quest for power results in the deaths of once-respected villagers, the girls begin to turn on one another, and the book becomes impossible to put down. Concluding historical notes tell what happened to the young ladies' real-life counterparts. Angelina Benedetti, "13 Going on 30", Booksmack! 10/21/10
School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up—Wicked Girls weaves a fresh interpretation of the events put forth in Arthur Miller's The Crucible and revisited more recently by Katherine Howe in The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (Voice, 2009). Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam, and Mary Walcott (in this story, called "Margaret") point their fingers, lift their eyes, and cry "witch" once again. Elderly Goody Nurse appears, Mary Warren (here called "Ruth") recants her accusations, John Proctor is accused and hanged, and Giles Corey is pressed to death. The verse format is fresh and engaging, distilling the actions of the seven accusing girls into riveting narrative. In Hemphill's village of Salem, Mercy Lewis (age 17) and Ann Putnam, Jr. (age 12) vie for control of the group of girls who quickly become swept up by their celebrity. Their accusations become self-serving: the merest look or shudder from one of the "afflicted" means the offender (an inattentive lover; someone who has done a parent wrong) risks being branded a witch or wizard. Eventually, the group fractures and the girls turn on each other, leading to cruelty and death. In the author's note, Hemphill outlines the historical background, with source notes for further reading. As in Your Own, Sylvia (Knopf, 2007), she bases her book in fact, but acknowledges that "certain names and accounts have been changed, amended and altered" in the construction of her novel. Teens may need some encouragement to pick up this book, but it deserves a place in most high school collections.—Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061853302
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 10/1/2013
  • Pages: 432
  • Age range: 13 years
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