Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

The story of the Salem Witch Trials told through the lives of six women

Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted," 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names."

The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

Author: Marilynne K. Roach
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 09/03/2013
Pages: 472
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 5.90w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780306821202


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2013
Publishers Weekly 10/21/2013
Foreword 11/30/2013
Library Journal 12/01/2013 pg. 111

About the Author
Marilynne K. Roach earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and works as both a historian and illustrator. She has drawn illustrations and written how-to and travel articles for the Boston Globe, has lectured to groups ranging from kindergarten to senior citizens, and has written several scholarly articles on various aspects of the witch scare. She is a lifelong resident of Watertown, Massachusetts.