Review: Lucky us that we don't live in this time
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 30, 2014
[...]1...In a very rich and fluent storytelling Language Kari Edgren tell us the story of Selah Kilbrid. Selah lives in Hopewell, a small Quaker community in 1730 Pennsylvania. Since childhood she has been bearing a secret. This secret had been in her family for many generation, about them descendents of the Goddess Brigid. As her mother and her grandmother before her She is a healer in the community, but no one knows that they could really had the power to heal with there gift. Her family, although Catholic had settled in the New World to escape persecution of their kind in Ireland. They had been accepted into the Quaker community, and her father except the Quaker believe but although all the family attended the meetings his wife and his daughter had retained their own religion.Despite knowing she is engaged to her cousin who's on his way from Ireland, Nathan, a Quaker minister, pressed her into marring him or else he will expose her as a witch.Luckily her father made an arrangement to marry her to a second cousin from Ireland, Samuel Kilbrid. This relative is own his way to marry her. Per her dying fathers request she is going to meat him in PA harbor and married him straight away before returning to her house. Unfortunately, She learns of her cousin death from palsy on his voyage which, cause her to made a desperate decision to buy a contract of one servant, named Henry, and convince him to pose as her cousin and late as her husband. She outbids a wealthy brick works' owner for an the indentured servant, and made a new enemy.Henry is a mystery at the beginning; He was a strong and very intelligent person, who has a will keep his promise to protect his new “wife”. It was also, obvious the immediate strong attraction between him and Selah. But they didn't rush into things.I feel so lucky that I don't live On the 1700's when women were often looked as subservient than men and married off and looked at as mere property. Ignorance and religion often going hand in hand and especially in those times. This reality is not so far a way from another cases of accusing of witchcraft in North America:Between the years 1645–1663 80 cases - In 1645, Springfield, Massachusetts, experienced America's first accusations of witchcraft when husband and wife Hugh and Mary Parsons accused each other of witchcraft. Hugh was found innocent, while Mary was acquitted of witchcraft but sentenced to be hanged for the death of her child. She died in prison.in the in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693 Salem witch trials where a series of hearings and prosecutions of people (300 people, most of them women) accused of witchcraft over 30 people were hang out .The concept of witchcraft as harmful is often treated as a cultural ideology providing a scapegoat for human misfortune. This was particularly the case in the early modern period of Europe where witchcraft came to be seen as part of a vast diabolical conspiracy of individuals in league with the Devil undermining Christianity, eventually leading to large-scale witch-hunts, especially in Protestant Europe. Witch hunts continue to this day with tragic consequences.The reasons for accusations of witchcraft fall into four general categories:A person was caught in the act of positive or negative sorceryA well-meaning sorcerer or healer lost their clients' or the authorities' trustA person did nothing more than gain the enmity of their neighborsA person was reputed to be a witch and surrounded with an aura of witch-beliefs or OccultismBut also a witch were those who:a witch who curses a neighbor following some conflict (The "neighborhood witch" or "social witch").a professional healer, sorcerer, seer or midwife, or a person who has through magic increased her fortune to the perceived detriment of a neighboring household (The "magical" or "sorcerer" witch)portrayed in court narratives as a demon appearing in visions and dreams (The "supernatural" or "night" witch)The sentence for an individual found guilty of witchcraft or sorcery during this time, typically included either burning at the stake or being tested with the "ordeal of cold water" or judicium aquae frigidae Accused persons who drowned were considered innocent, and ecclesiastical authorities would proclaim them "brought back," but those who floated were considered guilty of practicing witchcraft.After this explanation above there is no wonder why Selah was so frighten and willing to anything even to pass the low. especially that her being a woman and a woman without relatives put her in a very week position. She also fall into the category of dealing in magic as "a good to be true" healer. Before her trail you could feel the evidence to the ignorance and superstitions of the people in the people conversations:"....The air crackled with excitement. Here and there, I picked up snippets of conversation. Mostly it was just more of the same—speculation about who the witch could be. On my left, when we passed by a small cluster of men, I heard something entirely different. Rather than tossing out names, they speculated on what would happen to the woman. One man thought it would only take the dunking chair to find out the truth. Other men openly argued the possibility of a hanging tonight..... "For many people in the audience Nathan vision was enough to accuse her as a witch. The other method Nathan use was the negative sorcery - She was responsible for the too much rain that destroy the field of her neighbors and the same time her fields didn't suffer so much damage. By this he gain the enmity of her neighbors. The direction of the trail seemed to end in her accusation, but surprisingly we had a very enlighted interference of the low (which those in the real life didn't have at all)Selah fear was so great that that she was keeping her secret from Henry that she loved so much fearing to lose him. By doing this she start to lose him anyway.I can't keep in this direction without exposing too much of the story so if like you can read it all by yourselves. I don't think that you will disappointed, it is really written very well and it soo......easy to carry away with the story.