01945 Summer 2019 WEB

Rewriting
history
BY BRIDGET TURCOTTE
I
nspired by the rich history of
Marblehead and the roots of her
ancestors, New York Times bestselling
author Katherine Howe has penned
another bewitching story.
Howe grew up in Houston, but family
roots led her to Marblehead as an adult.
Being in the town and touching materials
that existed when her ancestors were
accused of witchcraft brought history to
life for the writer.
"One thing that makes Marblehead
so special is that it's not a museum," said
Howe. "It's a living, breathing colony
that has always been there. The house I
was living in was built in 1705. To think
that someone's foot was on this same
floorboard, who almost certainly saw the
hangings happen because people went
from miles around to see it — it was that
kind of proximity that inspired me."
Howe was a teenager when she
learned of her relationship
to Elizabeth Howe and
Elizabeth Proctor, both
accused of witchcraft
during the Salem
Witch Trials in
1692.
It wasn't until
after Howe wrote
"The Physick Book
of Deliverance
Dane" that she
learned she was
also related to the
woman on whom
she chose to base
the main character
of her story.
"I found out
on a fluke," said
Howe. "I was
messing around
on Ancestry(.com)
a couple of years
ago and found
that Deliverance
Dane, the woman
who I wrote my
book about, was
my eighth greatgrandmother."
Howe chose
Dane as her main character because, in
real life, she played a marginal role in
the witch trials. She wanted the freedom
to create a more fictionalized character
without readers already having a mental
image attached to who she was. It
didn't hurt that she found Dane's name
striking.
Howe describes her preferred genre
as "historical fiction with a slight magic
twist."
She received the 2016 Massachusetts
Book Award for Children's Middle-
Grade/Young Adult Literature for The
Massachusetts Center for the Book.
The award is given for books published
by commonwealth residents or on
Massachusetts subjects.
Howe won the award for her young
adult novel "Conversion," published by
Penguin Books. It's a story about a senior
at an all-girl preparatory high school,
where students are under many pressures.
The girl, Colleen, becomes
unexplainably ill with a mysterious
illness, only for her close group of
friends to follow suit. The girls suffer
from seizures, violent coughing, and hair
loss.
Colleen realizes that Danvers, where
the story takes place, was once Salem
Village, where three centuries ago a
group of girls exhibited bizarre behavior
and were accused of and executed for
witchcraft.
The town searches for an explanation.
Everything from pollution to stress is
considered until the realization is made
that the girls are suffering from a hysteria
outbreak.
Howe, who was living in Ithaca,
N.Y., at the time she wrote the novel,
was fascinated by the idea of mass
psychogenic illness as she watched
the number of girls suffering from
nonepileptic seizures and other sudden
ailments grow.
Similar instances occurred in North
Carolina in 2002 and in Monroe, La.,
half a century earlier, according to The
New York Times.
"It was all over the news," said Howe.
"This looks exactly like what happened
with the afflicted girls in Salem. What is
it about being a teenage girl today that is
so intense and crazy that (it) makes you
physically sick?"
Howe will release "The Daughters of
Temperance Hobbs," a novel that returns
to the world of "The Physick Book of
Deliverance Dane," on June 25.
All of her books are either available in
store or to be ordered from the Spirit of
'76 Bookstore.
Howe has appeared on Good
Morning America, CBS This Morning,
NPR's "Weekend Edition," the BBC,
and the History Channel. In 2012, she
hosted the Expedition Week special
"Salem: Unmasking the Devil" for
National Geographic.
Howe and her husband Louis Hyman
share their time between Massachusetts
and New York, visiting their historic
home by the sea on summer vacations
and holidays.
"I just can't give up Marblehead,"
said Howe.