Search - The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

This is a page turner. I just couldn't put this book down and loved the flashbacks to Deliverance's time the most. The late 1600s were hard for women, especially Puritan women who had to be steely and reserved at all times. I came to respect Deliverance for her steadfast nature and her want to help those very people who condemned her. It is certainly hard to be strong when faced with conflict, especially that of the life threatening brand. The mother-daughter dynamic is important in the book, and each mother and daughter carries on their family legacy of spells and healing while adapting to the times. Just as mothers and daughters tend to be, each daughter is both like and unlike her mother.

Sometimes it seems as though Howe, a historian herself, uses the plot and Connie as an excuse to let us know just how much she personally knows about history. While this isn't a bad thing, quite the opposite in the opinion of this historian, it does make the dialogue sound forced at times.

There was one thing I did take issue with, but not enough to put me off of the book. I was sort of disappointed that this book turned from historical fiction / thriller to thriller / fantasy. I would have liked it better had the author not chosen to make the 'magic' aspect of what Deliverance and her kin did actual reality. When the characters began to do real magic, I gave a sigh. Part of the appeal of the book was that it spoke to me as an historian and a realist. What I wanted to see and get from the book was the story of a woman, a natural woman capable of using the earth as anyone could, being marked as evil for her skill with healing. That hope was cut short when the characters began actually speaking spells and shooting light from the tips of their fingers.

To be honest, I could see the ending coming a mile away. It was quite obvious from the get-go who the bad guy is. I was surprised that it took super-intelligent Connie so long to figure it out for herself. Then again, maybe I just have a distrustful nature. My suspicion as to the end of the book didn't ruin the plot for me, though, and I absolutely devoured the book.

It was a good book, but not a "keeper." I was tired of it by the time I was halfway thru, and I agree that the ending was totally predictable. If you like this period of history, though, the author has done a tremendous job with the details and descriptions...although going overboard at times to the point of being somewhat tedious.
Don't buy the book..wait until you can order it thru PBS.

Let me start with OMG! I loved this book. It was well written, the characters were well developed, the plot was amazing. I have to thank the First Look group over at Barnes and Noble for letting me be a part of this one.

The book follows Connie, a student working on her dissertation for her PhD in American History. Her mother asks her to get granna's house, in Marblehead Ma. (near Salem), ready to sell. Connie begins to discover weird things about the house from the beginning, and when she discovers the name Deliverance Dane she starts hunting for more information. The book jumps between the 1990's and the late 1600's - early 1700's. These jumps allow us to follow the stories of Deliverance, her daughter Mercy, and Granddaughter Prudence. As Connie gets closer to finding what she's looking for, the story of these women in the past gets filled in more and more. What Connie eventually finds is more than unexpected.

I love stories about Salem and the With Trials, but sometimes I think it's been so overdone that it would be hard to find a new angle to write about. Well let me tell you Katherine Howe has hit the nail on the head with this one. The story is enthralling. I became attached to Connie almost immediately.

I think this book was great. It was suspenseful at times, emotionally pulling, and fast paced. Even when I wasn't reading this one I was thinking about what was going to happen next. I truly became engrossed in this book. I'm finding it hard to write this review because I can't seem to explain what exactly it was I liked so much about it, and to just say I loved everything about it isn't very descriptive, but that's just it, I LOVED everything about this book.

This one I'm sure I will pick up and read many times in the future.

Great Book!

Can't post my copy because it's an ARC but I would recommend it highly :-)

Thoroughly enjoyed this supernatural-historical fiction-mystery!! Going on my list of favorites, though I did get a little frustrated why the heroine could not figure out who the bad guy was. It was too obvious, or is it just me? Makes me want to read more on the subject(s) & go back to grad school, lol!

The story as told by Katherine Howe is delightful. Connie, a bright young graduate student, has just passed her orals in Colonial history at Harvard. However, before she can begin her research her mother asks her to dispose of her grandmother's home. As she explores the house she finds references to Deliverance Dane, specifically on a paper scrap inside a key in an old Bible. Intrigued she becomes fascinated with this woman but information about her is scant. Who was she? When did she live?
The references Connie finds leads her through the family - Mercy, Prudence and Patience for the book called an Almanac, a book of receipts, and a shadow book among other terms. As the story unravels Connie discovers that her adviser is not the man she thought him to be and she falls in love with a steeplejack named Sam. Her perceptive mother who supports new age philosophy knows more and understands more than she should through the sketchy information Connie feeds her. When a strange symbol appears on the door of the house she becomes frightened. What does it all mean? Is there something to this witch stuff after all? Connie's rational mind rejects that thought but strange things begin to happen. Going through recipe cards, she finds one that when read aloud causes a dandelion to sprout, grow, flower and die. Frightened, she goes home and tries it on a dead spider plant and it, too, grows. Real? Imagination? What is it?

** WARNING: there be spoilers ahead... **


Author Katherine Howe's take on the Salem Witch trials of the 1690's features a little twist: her story imagines that one of the accused really had supernatural talents....

The story begins in 1681 when young healer Deliverance Dane visits the home of Peter Petford and attempts to help his ailing 5 year old daughter Martha.

Fast forward to 1991: Harvard University, where our main character Connie Goodwin is getting ready to answer some final questions in her qualifying exam for PhD candidacy. She is hoping to pass the orals, and spend the upcoming summer preparing her thesis on some aspect of American colonial history. A detour in her well laid plans occurs when her hippy, new-agey mother asks her to travel to Marblehead, Mass. and prepare her deceased grandmother's old house for sale. The house hasn't been lived in for 20 years, and is filled to the brim with the accumlated trash/treasure of centuries. What Connie discovers when cleaning out her granna's house is the basis for this lackluster tale of magic, superstition, prejudice and greed.

This book had all the potential to be a clear favorite with me. You've got your Salem Witch trials, you've got your old house filled with secrets, you've got a story imbued with hints of real magic and supernatural elements, you've got a young woman with links and connections to other women centuries past, and you've got your wee canny canine. What's not to love? Well, almost everything.

I will say that I did enjoy Howe's story featuring Deliverance Dane and her life. These snippets occured sporatically throughout the book, and were interesting and entertaining. Had the entire book been about Deliverance, I would probably have given this book 4 stars or more. Unfortunately, the majority of the book focused on modern day Connie, surely one of the stupidest candidates for PhD candidacy that Harvard has ever considered. Connie, while touted by the writer as a brilliant and clever young mind destined for BIG things in the world of colonial academia, displayes mind boggling idiocy when it comes to the most simple observations on colonial life. She is amazed and stunned by phonetic spellings of colonial first names (i.e. Marcy = Mercy - SHAAAZAM, who'd have guessed?!?). Although she is a born and Massachusetts native, she continually marvels over the speach patterns displayed by Boston Brahmins and similar citizens of her native state. WTH? Umm, people generally notice variations in speech when they are NOT native to the area, but Connie apparently finds the style of speech of her people extraordinary. In fact, Connie is so incredibly dense that her very own full name, "Constance", completely floors her with it's colonial associations. In point of fact, she even seems to forget that her name is Constance. Will somebody please explain to me how this is possible without amnesia or a full frontal lobotomy?.

Connie is, IMO, so stupid, so uninspiring, so vapid a creature that it boggles the mind to think she could ever share one atom of genetic material with the interesting Deliverance. And as Connie's story makes up 90% of the book's plot, it makes for a very tedious and boring story. The wonder of it all is that I gave it 2.5 stars, but I did find parts of it very moving and page turning.

This is one of those books, like "The Tenth Gift", that had great potential, but lacked skillful execution. There were flashes of it here and there, but not enough consistency to make it a winner in my mind.