The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs

In a work harking back to Howe's New York Times best-selling The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, history professor Connie Goodwin studies the uses of magic in Colonial America (think herbal healing). Actually, she's descended from a Salem woman accused of witchcraft whose magic was more real than history allows.

April 15, 2019
Howe (The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen, 2015, etc.) returns with a creepy, witchy sequel to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009). Though her former professor and adviser remains in a mental hospital, Connie Goodwin has turned her continued fascination with witchcraft in early America into a tenure-track professorship. She's working hard to finish her book, serving as a mentor to graduate students, and living with Sam Hartley, her steeplejack beau. Her mother, Grace, continues to inspire exasperated affection; when Connie goes to visit her, Grace insists on tying an eagle stone around her wrist as a symbol of maternal protection--the first clue that Connie is pregnant. Grace also tells Connie she should break up with Sam, pointing out that generations of women in their family have lost their husbands young, to sudden deaths. As Connie begins to research this phenomena, she discovers a single exception--Temperance Hobbs, an 18th-century ancestor whose portrait sits above Grace's fireplace and whose husband lived to be over 100. When Connie discovers a hidden box behind the portrait, it's clear that there might be a way to save Sam--but the consequences to the natural world may be greater than they can afford to pay. The story cuts back and forth between Connie's life in 2000 and the women engaged in "weather work" in the early Colonial period, and it takes a long time to build to a climax. Howe clearly has enjoyed doing her research; Connie's role as academic allows her to educate us about the history of witchcraft in America without too much lecturing. The characters are likable, but the mood and plot are slow to build. Until the spooky magic begins, too close to the end, the book casts a rather lukewarm spell.

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April 29, 2019
In this slow-moving follow-up to her bestselling The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Howe continues the tale of Connie Goodwin, a descendant of a Salem witch. The story is told through alternating timelines, one in Massachusetts in 2000, the other stretching from 1661 in England to 1816 Massachusetts. In 2000, 34-year old Connie is an assistant history professor at Northeastern University finishing a book on the history of witchcraft and putting together her tenure application. Once that’s accomplished, she plans to marry her longtime boyfriend, Sam Hartley. Shocked by her unplanned pregnancy, Connie’s startled when her mother, Grace, advises her to break up with Sam. It’s the only way to protect his life, Grace reminds Connie—the husbands in their family die young. Both women believe it’s a family curse connected to their female ancestors’ magical proclivities. But Connie decides to find a witchcraft recipe that will save Sam’s life. A mysterious key and a portrait of relative Temperance Hobbs—whose husband, Obadiah, lived to a ripe old age—may provide Connie with the answers she seeks. The earlier timeline traces the lives of Connie’s female forebears, including Deliverance Dane, who was accused of witchcraft at the Salem witch trials. The story lacks tension, however, and the witchcraft angle doesn’t do much to elevate it. Fans of the first book might enjoy catching up with Connie, but those encountering her for the first time won’t find themselves bewitched. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment.

May 1, 2019
In historian Howe's follow-up to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009), Connie Goodwin, an expert in colonial-era magic, is now a tenure-track professor in Boston still deeply in love with Sam Hartley, the strapping steeplejack she met in Physick Book. Sam wants to marry Connie, but she fears it will be the end of him, quite literally, as the paramours of the women in her Massachusetts family, which include Deliverance Dane, have always died young under tragic circumstances. When Connie discovers that she's pregnant, she delves back into the long lineage of mystical women in her family, many of whom were suspected of witchcraft, reaching back to seventeenth-century Salem. Connie scours the history books, looking for an ancestress who managed to save her husband and discovers Temperance Hobbs, whose portrait hangs in Connie's mother's house and whose husband lived to be more than 100 in the nineteenth century. Howe, who shares her protagonist's legacy, weaves together stories of Connie's ancestors' attempts to harness their power and Connie's own race to save Sam's life in this spellbinding, satisfying tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)