Sorceress

Picking up where the critically-acclaimed The Witch Child left off, Sorceress follows Agnes Herne, a Native American Haudenosaunee woman. She has vivid dreams of Mary Newbury, a witch accused by the church in 1660s Boston. When Agnes contacts Alison Ellman, the person who helped publish Mary’s diaries, she realises her dreams are visions. Agnes’s aunt Miriam calls her back to her reservation where she helps Agnes reach Mary and the continuation of her story through intense, immersive visions.

Twenty years after the publication of The Witch Child, Sorceress is rich with evocative descriptions of places, food, and textures the reader can tangibly experience. A slow-build story, the pay-off begins around 100 pages in when the reader begins to see just how potent Agnes’s dream-memories are. Experiencing Mary’s loss through memory, Agnes is a conduit for readers to feel as Mary felt, suffering pain, grief, loss and joy in the years following the end of her Boston diaries and the beginning of her new life with the Haudenosaunee tribe. Rees tells Agnes and Mary’s story in a dual narrative, skipping through time at the pace real dreams do, occasionally breaking for Agnes to surface from her dreams. Rees manages to vividly bring to life those moments on the edge of sleep and wakefulness. Although I would have liked to have seen more of Agnes’s life and the work she did with Alison, I think this book will continue to hold its own among more recent historical, witch-trial era fiction.

Courtney Smyth