Matthew Adams

Bewitching stuff

The notorious 17th-century trials get yet another fictional outing in Richard Francis’s bewitching novel, Crane Pond

issue 05 November 2016

Richard Francis’s new novel covers ostensibly familiar ground. Set in and around Boston in the 1690s, it tells the story of the Salem trials, which resulted in the execution of 20 people (14 of them women), and which are sometimes regarded as a hinge event in the evolution of American secularism.

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