The beauty of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts has always left visitors groping for superlatives, and the town of Northampton once dubbed The Athens of the Connecticut Valley has lately experienced a renaissance. Interest in the city has only risen through the years, and an assessment of its prominence throughout history easily explains its consistent attraction. From its settling in 1654 to the present, Northampton has been a hotbed of activity, idealism, growth, and change. Walking the streets of Northampton at different times were revolutionaries like Daniel Shays, patriots like Joseph Hawley, religious visionaries like Jonathan Edwards, idealists like the members of the utopian community in Florence, and governors like Caleb Strong and future president Calvin Coolidge. Notables like Sojourner Truth, Alexander Graham Bell, and President Franklin Pierce came and left, but their influences have remained.

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.

With a preface by Miles Barnes. The land causes abstracted here refer to chancery suits regarding dower rights, divisions of land among heirs, ejectment proceedings, etc. Included are depositions by various parties which frequently give dates of birth, death or marriage for key parties of the suit, and the verdict of the jury. In many cases ownership of the land is traced down from the original grant showing the various owners, and several generations of descendants.