Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

I came to the Owens family story through Rules of Magic, published years after the first Owens family novel, the immensely popular Practical Magic. I had liked the characters in Rules and realized their story was rooted in the very real struggles of young adulthood. Afterward, I finally read Practical. 

The prequel to Practical Magic, Magic Lessons, begins in 1664 in Essex, England. It is the story of the first Owens witch who cursed all the Owens women's loves.

The teenage witch Maria tragically loses her mentor and adopted mother. Her biological parents send her to the New World as an indentured servant. On St. Kitts, she honed her craft as a healer. Maria falls in love with the New England merchant John Hathorne, who abandons her without knowing she is pregnant. Maria travels to New England to find John.

She finds passage in exchange for nursing and healing the pirate Samuel Dias, whose Jewish family had fled Portugal. He falls in love with Maria.

Her troubles increase when she does find John. Her very life is threatened by the witch hunters of Salem, her daughter stolen from her.

John Hathorne in the novel is based on the actual magistrate who condemned women accused of being witches to death. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, our great early novelist, added that 'w' to his name to disassociate himself with his ancestor.)

Oh! the ways women have been controlled and punished for overstepping the narrow lives men ordained for them. If a woman reads, she must be a witch. If a woman stands up for herself, she must be punished. If a man is attracted to a woman, she has bewitched him and is evil. Bind them in iron and drown them! Nail their feet to the ground and burn them!

And women are still fighting this battle.

Maria understood that a woman with her own beliefs who refuses to bow to those she believes to be wrong can be considered dangerous.~from Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

The heart of the novel is, of course, love. How women love the wrong men and suffer for it. "Love someone who will love you back," Hannah advises. But how do we know love when we find it? Young people confuse lust with love, always have. We ignore the signs that later seem obvious. Maria rejects her true love, first because of her passion for John, and later because she vows never to love again.

Love was risky, for marriage required women to abdicate all self-determination and choice. Maria's magic helps women from men who abuse them.

I had a neighbor who said, "What goes around, comes around." Hoffman's rule of magic is similar: you get back threefold whatever you do. Best to do good! What magic you bring into the world becomes your responsibility.

Hoffman weaves her stories with flawed characters whose struggles we recognize, for even if they have magic at their command, they are very human. It is no wonder these books are so popular with readers. They offer romance, challenges, strong female characters, life lessons, and in this book a heavy dose of history.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read my review for  Rules of Magic
Read my review for Hoffman's novel Faithful here.
See my review for Hoffman's novel The Marriage of Opposites here.

Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date October 6, 2020
ISBN: 9781982108847
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Unnamed Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Kathleen Kent's book "The Heretic's Daughter" is set during the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692. She envisions the story of her ancestor Martha Carrier who was called "The Queen of Hell" by the Rev. Cotton Mather. To confess and name other witches allowed some mercy from the court. Of the 200 men and women arrested for witchcraft, Martha was the only person who would not perjure herself by confessing falsely to being a witch.

The Carrier family were free-thinkers, something that Puritan society held in suspicion. Thomas is a huge man of silent strength who inspires fear in his neighbors. Rumor has it that he was a murderer in old England when he served Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader that took over the government, resulting in the death of Charles I.

Martha is a distant and stern mother with a backbone of steel and a literal iron rod. She has three boys and two daughters. The middle child Sarah feels alienated from her family, especially after a sojourn with her cousin and her story-telling father and gentler mother. The novel is told through Sarah's eyes.

The Carriers have come to Andover to live with Martha's mother, not knowing they have also brought smallpox. Thirteen people die. After Grandma's death Thomas and Martha stay on the farm, which causes trouble with Martha's sister's family who had believed they should inherit the property.

Martha's surety and aloofness makes her no friends. Petty squabbles arise and community conflict escalates. Meanwhile in Salem young girls have been naming women as witches...and the Andover girls decide to join the movement. It becomes a way to get even with Martha and Sarah.

Martha is arrested for witchcraft, plunging the family into turmoil and disorder. One by one the children are also taken into custody as witches.

Kent spent five years researching this novel. The descriptions of home and prison life are detailed, and often disturbing. Their life is harsh, enduring the brutal winter cold and scathing summer heat. The boys take up the yoke to pull the plow. Cleanliness is a luxury. The fear of an Indian attack is always with them.

The suffering of the imprisoned women, whose family must provide their food and even pay for the manacles they are bound with, is exquisitely painful to read. A four year old child is jailed along with her mother, and left in jail after her mother's execution....because her father could not pay to have his daughter released.

The novel made me think about how groups will gather and attack those who don't fit in, who are different, who don't conform to the norm, who think freely. But also how one or two people can influence a way of thinking that escalates into a movement, for good or for bad.

I myself have seen modern day witch hunting in action. The gathering of a group of like-minded people reinforcing their shared beliefs, justifying their actions. The targeting of the person or persons believed to be a threat. The vicious attacks, the rumor mongering, the campaigning for others to join them. That scene in Disney's Beauty and the Beast where Gaston leads the villagers to attack the Beast, selling a vision of the threat the Beast posses, well, it happens outside of cartoons.

We know that McCarthyism was a 20th c. witch hunt. The pressure to name names is right out of old Salem. The passivity of bystanders during Hitler's rise to a power based on racial superiority and genocide is viewed today as remarkable. The Civil Rights movement was met with hatred and prejudice and fear. The Suffragettes were mocked, jailed, and abused because they asked for voting rights. All around the world tribal warfare, genocide, and repression occur.

Civilization is a process that does not follow a straight line. Human enlightenment is not a march as much as a dance that circles back before moving forward. What witch hunts are we willing to join today?