A Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson W. Baker

For example, in 1695, Thomas Maule, a Salem Quaker, published his opinion on the trials and in the simplest words, he denounced them. The background of this book is mostly set in 1692 but the author includes first-hand sources of people who experience the Witch Trials that year but wrote and published their accounts in later years. In the final pages of the book, Baker states, “change the word witch to terrorist and we can perhaps better appreciate the complexity of the problem that the people of Salem … faced in 1692.” Finally, Baker ends the book by challenging readers to put the past into perspective of our lives today with a moral derived from history.

The author makes a point that this was the final change for the colonies in history from Puritan communalism to independence. The Puritan government, already fading in the Massachusetts Bay, was truly tested and ended up feeding the public’s suspicions in their efforts to shut them down. To this day, historians are still questioning the Salem tragedy. Baker addresses the vast range of factors that may have caused this mystery to occur from religious disagreements, political conflicts, dishonest judges, government and charter changes, to the lethal frontier war.

The community of Salem began to look for answers as to why these women were suffering from demonic doings, which led to the Salem Witch Trials that ended with 19 women and men hanged and many others who died in prison. The witchcraft accusations began when villagers, who were mostly young women, started complaining of being haunted by a specter or curse and feeling the sensation of needles poking into their skin. The author focuses on the how and why the Salem Witch Trials began but is sure to explain that you cannot pinpoint an exact reason why this mystery occurred, “What happened in Salem was a perfect storm.” The chest was probably carved as a wedding gift for the Quaker couple Joseph and Bathsheba Pope in the 1670s, who end up playing a large role in the events in Salem, but not in the role you would think, being accused of practicing witchcraft but in fact they were accusers, who held the deaths of both Rebecca Nurse and John Procter on their hands. The novel opens by explaining a small wooden chest found as an artifact in the Peabody Essex Museum located in Salem, Massachusetts. Baker’s latest non-fiction book, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and The American Experience, discusses one of the most interesting and most studied events in U.S.

A Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson W. Baker