The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe

Connie Goodwin is a PhD candidate in American History at Harvard. Her ambition is to become a professor. For her dissertation, she starts to research a new source of material related to the Salem Witch trials. Her mother requested Connie to attend to the mess that her grandmother's house had become. Cleaning it out, packing up the things inside, getting it ready to be sold to pay off the tax lien.

Connie reluctantly goes to Marblehead, MA and moves into the house. While she's there, she starts having visions of the past and blinding headaches which she can't explain. At first.

There is a dual storyline in which we go back to the times of the Salem witch trials. Deliverance Dane is a "cunning" woman, which means that she tends to her patients with herbs and such. She has true power though and, more often than not, utilizes it to help those under her care. She was caught in the furor over the witches and did not survive.

It is a power that is passed on through the women in her family. From mother to daughter to granddaughter and so on.

I think the book was very well written. I could see the images in my head that Ms. Howe painted with words. I'm obviously not going to give the ending away but, if you're like me and fascinated with that time, it's worth the read.