by Elizabeth George Speare
256 pp.
Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler has lived most of her life on the sunny island of Barbados, raised by her grandfather. However, his death in 1687 forces her to go live with her only remaining relatives: an aunt and uncle in Wethersfield in the Connecticut Colony.
The atmosphere of the strict Puritan colony is very different from Kit's previous home, and she chafes under all the restrictions on her behavior. The people in the town are astounded and alarmed by her clothes and ideas, as well as her ability to swim, seen as an indication of witchcraft.
Lonely, she befriends elderly Hannah Tupper, a Quaker who was expelled from the Massachusetts colony because of her religion and a suspicion that she is a witch. Through her friendship with Hannah, Kit develops a relationship with Nat, the son of the captain that owned the boat she arrived on. When a deadly illness sweeps through the colony, Hannah and Kit are believed to be the cause. Soon, Kit finds herself on trial as a witch, and fighting for her life. Nat comes to her rescue and Kit is eventually set free of the charges.
Given such a plotline, you might reasonably expect this book to use its modern elements (an outcast woman, a free-spirited young girl, superstitious attitudes) to bash Puritan America for its ignorant and unenlightened culture. But in fact Puritan culture is portrayed accurately and sympathetically, with wickedness attributed to individuals and not to any culture. The free-spiritedness of Kit is unremarkable in our own age, even within the Christian community, and so actually serves as a bridge for understanding the very different attitudes of the Puritans.
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