Six Women of Salem, Marilynne K. Roach
Six Women of Salem, Marilynne K. Roach
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Six Women of Salem
The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

Author: Marilynne K. Roach

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 17 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/17/2014


Synopsis

Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, two hundred and seven individuals had been accused, seventy four had been "afflicted," thirty two had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and two hundred and fifty five ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names."

The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered, and, in remembering specific lives, modern audiences can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows listeners what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

About Marilynne K. Roach

Marilynne K. Roach earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and works as both a historian and illustrator. She has drawn illustrations and written how-to and travel articles for the Boston Globe, has lectured to groups ranging from kindergarten to senior citizens, and has written several scholarly articles on various aspects of the witch scare. She is also the author of The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege.
She is a lifelong resident of Watertown, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul

For the author, no doubt this book is a great achievement, the culmination of a lengthy period of research. It is in respect for this hard work and sheer scholarship that I award 'Six Women of Salem' two stars rather than one. What a shame that this book is pretty much unreadable. The main problem is......more

This was an excellent book and an intimate look into the times and people involved in the Salem Witch Trials. I rather enjoyed reading and learning more about this historic time.......more

Goodreads review by Ashley

The search for the book about the Salem witch trials that only seems to exist in my head continues! I do not know if I will ever find a book about this subject that will give me what I'm looking for. I don't know if one exists, or if it is even possible for one to exist. This book came the closest s......more