Reading up a storm

The Minister’s Daughter by Julie Hearn

This book is another Young Adult novel that I’d seen at the library. The description of it really intriqued me. It’s about two girls in England in the mid-1600s, one who is a “healer” and the other is a minister’s daughter who accuses the “healer” girl of being a witch. It was a really fascinating book and I had a hard time putting it down when I first started reading. It also sparked my interest once again about the Salem Witch Trials, I was so fascinated by them when I was in junior high and high school. Several years ago, I saw a program called Secrets of the Dead II — Witches Curse on PBS about how a lot of the hallucinations of the people who accused others of being witches were actually caused by eating fungus-infested rye. One thing that the author of The Minister’s Daughter observed is that a lot of the women who accused others of being witches were minister’s daughters themselves. Very interesting.

July 20-24, 2006