The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Page 38
I began telling myself this story while studying for my own PhD qualifying exams, in American and New England studies at Boston University, taking my own dog on rambles through the woods between Salem and Marblehead. I honed it further while teaching an introductory research and writing seminar on New England witchcraft to two groups of BU freshmen. (They especially liked the extra-credit assignment, which was to look up two different methods of un-bewitching a cow and explain the pros and cons of each.)
The narrative offered a unique opportunity to restore individuality, albeit fictional, to some of these distant people. I was also drawn to Deliverance’s story by my sympathy with the New England legacy of difficult, and sometimes overly bookish, women. Did the knowledge of my distant ancestors’ unconventional pasts help steer me toward graduate work in American culture? I feel certain that it did. But even lacking that knowledge, I suspect that their witchiness, however we understand it, contributed to my being the kind of person I am. I am grateful to those vanished people for whatever fragments of them may persist within myself.
—Katherine Howe
Marblehead, Massachusetts
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
That this story was able to travel from an idle thought experiment to a finished manuscript is due entirely to the involvement of the following people: my literary agent, Suzanne Gluck, whose brilliance, friendship, and insight has informed every aspect of this project from its inception; Ellen Archer at Hyperion, whose vision, kindness, and confidence in the book encouraged me at every turn; my editor, Leslie Wells, who ushered the manuscript from rough draft to completion with marvelous attentiveness, precision, and care; Pamela Dorman, whose belief in the book helped to make it a reality; and Matthew Pearl, my sensei, without whose guidance, cheerleading, and mentorship this book would never have come into being.
I have been fortunate to work with some amazing people in the publishing world whose support and advice eased every stage of this project. At William Morris, I would like to thank Sarah Ceglarski, Bill Clegg, Rob Clyne, Georgia Cool, Raffaella De Angelis, Michelle Feehan, Tracy Fisher, Erin Malone, Cathryn Summerhayes, Elizabeth Tingue, and Eric Zohn. At Hyperion and Voice, my appreciation and thanks go to Anna Bromley Campbell, Marie Coolman, Barbara Jones, Kristin Kiser, Sarah Landis, Allison McGeehon, Claire McKean, Linda Prather, Shubhani Sarkar, Nina Shield, Betsy Spigelman, Mindy Stockfield, Katherine Tasheff, and Jessica Wiener. My thanks also go to Mari Evans at Penguin UK for her splendid feedback, enthusiasm, and warmth.
A book this grounded in history would be nothing without its source base, and I am grateful to the many historians whose work has guided me through this project. In particular, Anthony Aveni, whose Behind the Crystal Ball provided the “abracadabra” charm; Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, for their definitive books Salem Possessed and Salem-Village Witchcraft; Owen Davies, for Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History; John Demos, for Entertaining Satan; Cornelia Hughes Dayton’s history of the early colonial legal system, Women Before the Bar; Grillot de Givry, for Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy, the source of the magic circle symbol in the story; Carol Karlsen, for the feminist history Devil in the Shape of a Woman; Mary Beth Norton, for In the Devil’s Snare; Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale, which directly inspired the journal-keeping midwife in my narrative; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibition catalogue New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century. The University of Virginia online archive of Salem witchcraft papers held in special collections all over New England enables an ease of research that an earlier generation of scholars could only dream about; see http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/.
In addition, many friends and colleagues have offered reading notes, brainstorming, and encouragement when it was most needed, especially Mike Godwin, Greg Howard, Eric Idsvoog, Emily Kennedy, Kelley Kreitz, Brian Pellinen, Shannon Shaper, Weston Smith, Raphaelle Steinzig, Michelle Syba, and Tobey Wiggins. I am indebted to the students and faculty of the American and New England Studies Program and the Writing Program at Boston University, with special thanks to Roy Grundmann, Virginia Myhaver, Michael Prince, Bruce Schulman, and especially my students in WR 150 “New England Witchcraft.” Justin Lake at Texas A&M lent me his considerable Latin expertise and taught me how to gamble. Alice Jardine in the Committee on Degrees in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard gave me that rarest of things in graduate school: a steady teaching job. Will Heinrich helped me to imagine what was possible, in writing as well as life, and forbade me from letting fear stand in the way. I am also deeply grateful to my advisor, Patricia Hills, whose scholarship in art history and American studies brought me to graduate school in the first place, and whose friendship and support kept me there.
Finally, as this is a book essentially about families changing over time, I would like to thank my own, both extended and immediate: especially Grandmother and Grandfather, Mere and Charles, all of whom haunt this story in their own secret ways; Julia Bates, poet, musician, New Englander, great-aunt, and dear friend; Greg and Patty Kuzbida; and Rachel Hyman. Most important, thanks to my parents, George and Katherine S. Howe, whose influence and significance in my life are difficult to summarize in such a narrow space. And lastly, Louis Hyman, partner in all things, both life and crime, inspiration, muse, chef, counselor, and nag, who every day makes me realize that I somehow managed to win a contest that I didn’t know I had entered.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE. Copyright © 2009 by Katherine Howe. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-1-4013-9443-1
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