About When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story by Brenda Murphy
Free Kindle version June 27-June 29
When Light Breaks Through takes us beyond the witch trials to tell a riveting, expansive story of what happened in Salem Village.
1692. In what begins as a daring adolescent game, twelve-year-old Ann Putnam becomes a ringleader of the “afflicted children” who accuse scores of people of witchcraft, resulting in twenty executions and untold misery for those imprisoned and their families in Massachusetts and Maine.
1697. Joseph Green, a young schoolteacher who is in love and eager to marry, takes on the Salem Village ministry that no one else wants and sets about mending the bitter discord that divides the congregation and the village. With his wife Elizabeth, he gradually earns the respect and trust of his congregation, eventually taking some dramatic actions that move the people to confront their future together as a community.
1706. With Joseph’s help, Ann delves into the darkness of her past, uncovering startling truths about her family and her childhood motivations. Standing before the neighbors whose loved ones she has sent to jail or to their deaths, she makes an appeal that could finally unite the people in forgiveness.
The compelling narrative takes us from the girlhood friendship of Ann and Abigail Williams, the other ringleader in the witch trials, to the intense, often shocking drama of the trials themselves, and to the small farming village on the edge of the frontier in 17th-century Massachusetts where Joseph Green pursues his quest to unite a bitterly divided people.
Buy the book, and follow the author on social media:
Learn more about the writer. Visit the Author’s Website.
Author Bio:
Brenda Murphy is the author of more than twenty books. Recently she has been writing mainly historical fiction. Besides When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story (2023), her recent fiction includes Becoming Carlotta: A Biographical Novel (2018), based on the life of the actress Carlotta Monterey, and After the Voyage: An Irish American Story (2016), historical fiction based on the experience of her immigrant family in the Boston area from 1870 until the 1930s. After teaching at universities in New York and Connecticut, Brenda now lives in Maryland where she enjoys writing full time surrounded by deer and horse farms.