Karen Vorbeck Williams' novel My Enemy's Tears: The Witch of Northampton is based on the historical record of Mary Bliss Parsons and Sarah Lyman Bridgeman, whose lives trace the journey of English Separatists to the New World, the growth of the first settlements along the Connecticut River from Hartford to Northampton, the lives of women in 17th century New England, and the conflict of faith and reason that gave rise to American democracy. The Puritans in Hartford, which is at first little more than a campsite, find the wilderness a terrifying place full of warring natives, pestilences and floods destroying their crops, blazing comets, earthquakes and hurricanes--all portents of God's anger or a witch's meddling curse. Mary Bliss and Sarah Lyman grow up amid Puritan superstition and piety, busy with their household chores, one imagining a life different from her mother's and the other eager to marry and bear sons. Mary Parsons and Sarah Bridgeman spend their married lives in the villages of Springfield and Northampton, where a youthful disagreement festers into a reason to hate and then to fear. As the years pass, one accuses the other of murder by witchcraft, prompting a trial before the Court of Assistants in Boston--17 years before the infamous Salem Witch Trials. My Enemy's Tears looks at two lives--one blessed and one cursed--and the transcendent power of forgiveness. About the Author KAREN VORBECK WILLIAMS has lived more than thirty-five years in New England where she found the inspiration, settings, and spirit for My Enemy's Tears: The Witch of Northampton, historical fiction based on the life of her ancestor Mary Bliss Parsons. This is her first novel. She's been an editor for fourteen years and is a prize-winning photographer. |