The Heretic's daughter

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
Cover Description:  In 1752 Sarah Carrier Chapman, confined to her home and weak with infirmity, writes a letter to her granddaughter, revealing the secret she has guarded closely for six decades.  It is a haunting account of the horrors that enveloped a New England town called Salem, and compelled Sarah, then just a young girl, to make a decision that would change her life forever. 
A little more than a year before the witch trials will begin, Sarah and her family arrive in nearby Andover to face a community gripped by superstition and fear.  with the increase in Indian raids and the spread of the plague, the Puritans come to believe that heretics in their midst are responsible for their misfortune.  Based on the accusations of a dozen young girls, neighbor is pit4ed against neighbor, friend against friend, and the hysteria escalates, sweeping more than two hundred men, woman, and children into prison on charges of witchcraft - Sarah's mother, Martha Carrier, among them.  Often at odds with each other, mother and daughter must now stand defiantly together in the face of imprisonment, torture , and even death.  Out of love for her children, Martha asks Sarah to commit an act of heresy - a lie that will most surely condemn Martha even as it will save her daughter.

The Heretic's daughter takes place during the Salem witch trials which is a subject that really interests me, not being from that part of the US it is not common knowledge where I live.  However the real root of the novel is about relationship.  The relationships of Puritans during the 1600's were very different than know, it was a hard life and there wasn't much joy, laughter was frowned upon and children were thought of as little adults.  The Heretic's daughter examines relationships between families, husband and wife, brother and sister, neighbors (both friends and enemies) and of course the main relationship between mother and daughter.  Sarah is often at odds with her mother, a strong, strict woman who rules her household with a strong heart.  It isn't until the end, when she makes the ultimate sacrifice for her family that Sarah realizes that she truly is her mother's daughter, and always has been.