May 1, 2023
From its opening lines this historical novel from Grindle (Villa Triste) grips with its rare blend of a powerfully evoked past, resonant characters, smart suspense, and prose touched with shivery poetry: “Nothing will lead you to guess what sweet familiars we were, thirty years ago in Massachusetts, where they called me Witch,” narrator Resolve Hammond declares early on, and the story that follows lives up to that line’s promise. In Eastward, Massachusetts, in 1688, young Resolve and her mother offer natural healing to both settlers and Natives, whose coexistence is uneasy at best. Trained by a Native sachem, Resolve lives somewhat apart from the Christians, but Resolve knows enough to say this of their fear: “like a fever or a pox, it is contagious.”
But, set a half decade before nearby Salem’s infamous trials, Grindle’s richly told tale doesn’t hold to the familiar beats of witch-hunt panic. Even as her mother explains to the town that a mysterious death was caused by natural poison rather than witchery, Resolve herself suspects a ten-year-old girl, Abigail, of being a changeling or demon. The suspense is multi-layered and provocative as Grindle deftly details the settlers’ fraught interactions with multiple tribes, their concerns that reports of potential deviltry might draw the attention of Boston’s brimstone-preaching Mathers, the question of how to interrogate a young girl, and the thrill and terror of civilization taking root among wild woods and coast.
Adding to the pervasive uncertainty is readers’ awareness of the superstitious injustice looming in the region’s near future, and the teasing possibility that, in spite of our rational understanding of history, something beyond our mortal realm just might actually be preying on Abigail—and others, too—all as Resolve and her mother themselves face the suspicions of the settlers. Powered by telling historical detail, vivid visions, and an urgent sense of empathy for its characters, The Devil’s Glove will dazzle readers who appreciate immersive, lyric historical fiction open to possibilities.
Takeaway: Gripping historical novel in the years before Salem’s witch trials.
Comparable Titles: Stacey Halls’s The Familiars, Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A