In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton

Time and again, when it would seem that all that could be said had been said about Salem witchcraft, these new approaches have yielded fresh information and insight. Over the past century and a half historians and scholars of other disciplines have taken new approaches to the episode.

But this is only one of many interpretations put forward since the trials and executions. 'Hysteria' has become integrally associated with Salem: thus the term 'Salem witchcraft hysteria,' which bespeaks the widespread interpretation of the events as originating in a mass delusion, a psychological aberration on a large scale. Nineteen people were hanged and one pressed to death, with several more adults, children and infants dying in prison, in what has become a wrenching cautionary tale of complicity, pettiness and mass hysteria. Beginning in January 1692 with the 'affliction' of young girls-the daughter and niece of Salem Village's minister, Samuel Parris-the number of the bewitched grew, the search for witches and wizards spread, over 100 people were jailed, and a series of sensational and controversial trials ensued. By providing this essential context to the famous events, and by casting her net well beyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on one of the most perplexing and fascinating periods in our history.The early years of each decade seem to bring a new spate of books on the Salem witchcraft episode, as if to commemorate anew the tragic events that occurred in 1692-93. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see a vast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and the Indians) threatening New England on all sides. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages.

Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees-including the main accusers of witches-had fled to communities like Salem.

In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study.

In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton