About this item
Highlights
- Bitter Magic, inspired by the true story of Isobel Gowdie and her witchcraft confession, reveals a little-known corner of history-the lives of both pagan and Protestant women in the Scottish Reformation of the 1600s as witch trials and executions threatened their lives, values, and beliefs.The story is told by Isobel herself and also by Margaret Hay, a fictionalized seventeen-year-old noble woman.
- Author(s): Nancy Hayes Kilgore
- 278 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
Description
About the Book
In the Scottish Highlands, young Margaret encounters Isobel, a cunning woman. Margaret is enchanted by Isobel's tales of fairies and magic and begins to sneak away from her strict Protestant family to learn healing charms.
Book Synopsis
Bitter Magic, inspired by the true story of Isobel Gowdie and her witchcraft confession, reveals a little-known corner of history-the lives of both pagan and Protestant women in the Scottish Reformation of the 1600s as witch trials and executions threatened their lives, values, and beliefs.
The story is told by Isobel herself and also by Margaret Hay, a fictionalized seventeen-year-old noble woman. When Margaret stumbles across Isobel one day, it seems as though Isobel is commanding the dolphins in the ocean to dance. Margaret is enchanted. She becomes interested in Isobel's magic, in fairies, and in herbal remedies; Isobel freely shares her knowledge. While Margaret worries that being around Isobel could be dangerous, she also respects Isobel's medical successes and comes to believe that acknowledging the efficacy of herbal remedies or believing in fairies does not challenge her Christianity.
But Isobel believes in more than cheery fairies and herbal medicine. She has dark wishes as well, unknown to most people. Isobel seeks vengeance against the local lord who executed her mother for witchcraft. More important, Isobel's trance experiences (or are they dreams?) lead her to confess to a wide range of sins, including consorting with the devil. Then, during her trial, Isobel names thirteen others, calling them all witches. To her great shock, Margaret hears her own name. Can her tutor, a Christian mystic named Katharine, save them?
Review Quotes
'Bitter Magic may masquerade as a windswept historical gothic in the mode of Daphne DuMaurier or Anya Seton, but is something rarer. Nancy Kilgore's vision is utterly contemporary, concerned not with simple outcomes of guilt or innocence in the public sphere but the complicated shades of gray within her characters.'
- Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying
"This page-turning story will keep you up at night, wondering what's going to happen in a much more complex story than we usually hear about "the burning times." The heroine is a curious, likable young woman, the "witch" an expert naturalist and healer who goes astray, and you'll never see a more thrilling version of the devil."
- Mary Dingee Fillmore, bestselling author of An Address in Amsterdam
"Compelling . . . A fascinating story made more so by the tie to the historical record and actual documents . . . a more complete, holistic portrait of a strange aspect of human history than other witch narratives."
- Ruth Linnaea Whitney, author of SLIM, a novel of Africa
"Kilgore's lyrical prose and talent for world building create a wondrous landscape in which the many-layered story unfolds."
- Tracey Enerson Wood, bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife