I read this book as part of Barnes and Nobles’ First Look Book Club. Barnes and Noble also has a popular online video series called Tagged (www.BN.com/Tagged). The show’s hostess, Molly Pesce, sat down with Katherine Howe to talk about her book. If you haven’t read the book yet, don’t worry, there are no spoilers.

Here is that interview. Molly also adds some of her top picks for Father’s Day. [Sorry I'm a day late but you might pick up some ideas for good books, a movie and a new cd.]

Katherine Howe’s personality comes across in the book. It made for such a good read.

by Katherine Howe

Hyperion, June 2009

I’ve had the most amazing experience in reading this book. I read it as part of the First Look Book Club with Barnes and Noble. With this bookclub we read the book over a four week period. It is suggested that members stay with the schedule and read just so much each week. My problem was that I didn’t want to stop reading and then I got to a point where I wanted to go in slow motion. I didn’t want the book to end. I’m going to confess right now that this is one of my favorite books of the year. This isn’t going to be a negative review. So be prepared.

Summary from the publisher: Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key secreted within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest to find out who this woman was, and to unearth a rare colonial artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge of herbs and other, stranger things. As the pieces of Deliverance’s harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem’s dark past then she could have ever imagined.

Joyfully Retired Thinks: Most of you know I don’t like books with weird things in them like vampires and witches. Strange things happen in this book but it’s never weird. The main character is someone I now know, like and understand. In spite of being raised by a single mom who’s part hippy, part new-age, Connie’s a nice conventional young woman, a serious student. There are other good characters set in modern times: Her advisor, Manning, is someone I didn’t trust; there is Liz, Connie’s roommate and good friend; and then there is Sam, a very nice young man. In addition we meet characters from the 16 and 1700s. The story flows back and forth smoothly.

Good plot and good characters – what else do you need? Good writing? This book has it all. Here’s a sample:

A chime sounded, and the great mass of humanity in the train car bunched together near the doors, building up in a blockade of arms and legs and headphones and backpacks before pouring out, first in a trickle, and then in a slurry as the doors slid open. Connie felt herself carried along in the current of bodies roiling out onto the subway platform, closing her throat against the mixed smells of perfume, sweat, asphalt, melting tires.

I had a chance to ask the author some questions about her writing: I am amazed that this is your first novel. Where did you learn to write so well? Is it a gift or a well-trained skill?

On the one hand, I have written since I was a little kid. A teacher introduced me to journaling when I was about 9, and I never stopped. So part of it is just doing a lot of writing, for a long time. Another big part of effective writing is being a heavy reader, I think. Then you have a chance to see how other writers handle things like voice, mood, narrative structure, and pacing. But the most important element, for me, was having the chance to teach composition while I was a graduate student. Trying to come up with ways to help other people improve their writing made me better able to work on my own. I became a better reviser, and better able to handle constructive criticism.

I think writing is a skill, like anything else. Maybe some people are more inclined to enjoy practicing that skill. The more one enjoys the practice, the more practice one does.

Was there anything I didn’t like? No, there wasn’t. From the unique cover (like thick parchment paper) to the last page it was a very enjoyable four plus weeks of reading. I will re-read this one, for sure.

About the author:  Katherine Howe is completing a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies, and is a descendant of Elizabeth Proctor, who survived the Salem witch trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not. The idea for this novel developed while Howe was studying for her doctoral qualifying exams, and walking her dog through the woods between Marblehead and Salem. She lives in Massachusetts, with her husband.

The book goes on sale tomorrow.

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