This happened Sept. 3 to allow more people to come. And everyone did come, except for Jody and our new member. The book was The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent. In keeping with the theme--and lacking a Puritan restaurant in Houston--we met beforehand at The Raven (well, Poe, witches, general scariness). We then repaired to Goodwife Dowe's. She apparently was unable to come up with any Puritan desserts, but we were delighted with the ice cream sundae bar. Ice cream--surely a devilish creation.
Item one on the agenda was to pick books for the next round. We were apparently feeling very undecisive, but we finally did come up with a list.
We all enjoyed the book and had a good discussion, with occasional forays into side issues. For example several people said that they could not have survived the jail where the witches were imprisoned. That led to a discussion of germs and our varying concerns about germs now.
Mary Brower was the expert of the evening, having read up on Salem and witches as well as varying types of torture used in this country vs. Europe. She is the only one of the group (as far as we know) with an ancester who played a part in the Salem trials (on the "wrong" side).
We discussed the characters and people expecially disliked Mercy, the indentured servant who had been ransomed out of Indian captivity. We then debated whether women of the time might have been better off with the Indians--the gender roles were certainly more equal.
The characters in this book were very well drawn and three dimensional, and all the details of the Puritans' hard life were fascinating.
The next meeting will be at my house and we will be reading Home by Marilynne Robinson.
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