FIRST LOOK
Due in bookstores June 9, 2009.

This book started out very slow and hard to putter through. The author is heavily educated (currently studying for her Ph.D. in history I believe) and unfortunately sometimes that made it hard to enjoy the novel in parts. While the book shows that her vocabulary is extensive, it tends to become overly verbose at times and some of the phrasing is very staid. She also had the habit of throwing in conversations between Connie and people and alternating between the correct spelling and the phonetic spellings of someone who has the Boston Brahmin accent which was very distracting. Ultimately though, the explanation behind that was an integral part of the story line.

Connie has just passed her orals at Harvard with flying colors, and is now planning on spending the summer researching for her dissertation. Then her mom calls and tells her that she needs Connie to spend the summer in her grandma's house in Salem to prepare it for selling lest the town seize it for unpaid property taxes owed. So Connie and her dog Arlo make the move into the shack overrun with plants from the gardens.

One night, thumbing through Granna's books, she finds a bible that dates back to the colonial era and a key with a piece of parchment attached that says Deliverance Dane.

She takes the key to her advisor Professor Chilton, who tells her that Deliverance Dane could be the name of somebody in the Colonial times as names then tended to be heavily biblical. After much research, in and out of buildings in Salem and Cambridge, Connie realizes that Deliverance could be an undocumented witch during the Salem Witch Trials. Chilton is ecstatic upon finding this out, and urges her to find the book that was listed as part of her trust and passed down through generations. While researching Connie meets Sam, a restorer of cupolas in churches and feels an instant connection. She finds that Sam is more than just a carpenter, and actually received his Master's in a field similar to hers.

Once Sam was added into the mix of the story, it became much more animated. Howe added another dimension to Connie and it brought the intensity of the character down a bit. Part I was hard to become attached too, but I couldn't put the book down for Part II. Howe also broke up the story of Connie's research by putting in interludes set in the times of Deliverance and her daughter Mercy and Mercy's daughter. I loved the interludes! That helped me push through Part I, looking for the next interlude and wondering whose perspective it would be from. The plot of the novel is tied up seamlessly at the end, and though I suspected the character, I was still surprised at the end when the pieces came together.