salem

Escaping Salem had to be the most interesting book I read this semester. I had initially thought this book was just going to be facts and not really a story being told but I was proven wrong once I actually read the book. This book goes into detail about a set of witch trails, that were not as big as the Salem witch trial, but they were still really important. This other witch hunt takes place in Stamford, Connecticut in 1692. It describes the events leading up to the actual trial, what happens during the trials, and how each woman ends up when the court makes it final decision. It goes into detail about a different set of witch trials that occurs in Early American History.
Escaping Salem begins with a young maid servant name Kathrine Branch who is assumed to be bewitched. She has night terrors, where she claims that someone comes into her room and torments her. When the Wescots, who are the people she is a maidservant for, are quickly reminded of how their daughter went through the same thing a couple of years ago. They automatically feel responsible for her since she lives under their care. At first they had thought Kate had just fallen ill or was doing this as a way to get out of doing her chores, but they soon come to find out that she just might really be under the curse of a witch. They had women who were known around Virginia as “nurses”, come check her out and most of them had ruled that Kate’s fits and outbursts were caused from bewitchment and demonic assaults.
Daniel and Abigail Wescot did not trust Kate to be alone, so they had made sure someone was with her at all times. They had begun to stay and watch Kathrine during the night to keep an eye on her. However, it started to take a toll on both of them, so they got s...

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...’t like about this book. On some parts of Escaping Salem, I got confused on what was going on and had to go back pages and re-read it because I needed a clear understanding of what was happening. Also, the words were a little too small to me, and I continued to lose my place in the book and had trouble finding the place where I stopped reading. If I could say anything about what the author could do better, the only thing would be, to just break the chapters up. For me, when I read a book and I get done with a chapter I feel like I am progressing or I am getting somewhere. But, when there are not a lot of chapters but there are a lot of pages in between, I tend to get restless and feel like I have a ton of reading to do when in reality it is just a really long chapter. However, I was able to overlook those negative things because Escaping Salem was very interesting.