The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

The Moment: You'd rather sink than float

by Matt Jakubowski

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The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
by Katherine Howe

Spookily predictable, with a plot as goofy as an episode of Scooby-Doo (complete with feisty puppy), Physick is a supernatural mystery set in 1991 New England about young Harvard student Connie Goodwin, who's searching for a book of spells (a "physick book") from the days of the Salem witch trials. As Connie begins her dissertation on American colonial life, her kooky mom conveniently tells Connie about her grandma's house near Salem, filled with spells and spices and a mysterious key that falls out of a Bible. The unbelievably dim-witted Connie then searches for family clues about poor Deliverance Dane, a "cunning woman" whose tragic story connected to "the Salem panic" is told via detailed flashbacks to the 1600s.

The author, Katherine Howe, is a scholar whose relatives are women accused in the real Salem trials, so the novel's flashback scenes are much stronger than Connie's story, which is campy and clichéd. The one major surprise Howe offers in this bag of literary junk food, which at least pretends to be "a feminist reconception of vernacular magic," is the moment when Deliverance is molested by female accusers who condemn her for having a "witch's teat." (They're not talking about an extra nipple. Think lower.) Howe's book is slow-paced and her writing can't sustain much tension. It's also disappointing that Connie, descended from women killed at Salem (not unlike her author), is relegated to cartoon status, impossible to root for as a protagonist.