The Familiars

December 15, 2018
The lives of two young women intersect in a novel that imagines the story behind a famous 17th-century witch trial in northern England.The narrator of journalist Halls' dramatic first novel is 17-year-old Fleetwood Shuttleworth, married at 13 to Richard Shuttleworth, lord of Gawthorpe Hall. She's pregnant for the fourth time, though each of her earlier pregnancies has resulted in a miscarriage. Desperate to produce an heir so she won't be cast aside for a more fertile wife or mistress, and even more frantic to survive the childbirth she suspects may cause her death, she seeks out the help of local midwife Alice Gray. The two have become friends, and Fleetwood's pregnancy is proceeding smoothly, when Alice is accused, along with a dozen of her friends and neighbors, of witchcraft and jailed in a dungeon by a local magistrate. Fleetwood, traveling around the countryside accompanied only by her mastiff, Puck--to her husband's chagrin--must try to find a way to free Alice before she is condemned to death. The characters, places, and some of the major events in Halls' well-researched novel are historically accurate, though the author adds some fictional embroidery: There's no evidence that Fleetwood and Alice met, let alone formed an alliance. For better or worse, this is essentially the story of aristocratic Fleetwood rather than commoner Alice, who remains a shadowy figure. Fleetwood is a plucky and determined, if not particularly complex, character. Halls, whose plot sometimes relies too heavily on information concealed for the sake of narrative convenience, adds a few hints of magic to the plot, though she resists using it to get her characters out of trouble. Her main strength lies in her depiction of the difficulties of life for women in this time and place, where pregnancy and childbirth posed a real threat to life and acting in socially inappropriate ways could get one condemned to hanging.A solid if not entirely credible historical novel.

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January 1, 2019
The mistress of an English country estate in the early seventeenth century, Fleetwood Shuttleworth is desperate. So far she has failed to produce an heir, suffering several pregnancies that all ended in miscarriages. Now, pregnant for the fourth time, she finds a letter from her husband that indicates she may not survive another attempt. It is under these circumstances that she meets Alice Gray, whose midwifing skills quickly prove indispensable to Fleetwood. But as an ambitious magistrate sees his opportunity to advance his career by pursuing witches in nearby Pendle, Alice's skills with herbs and healing take on a darker appearance, which may put her life and those of Fleetwood and her unborn child at risk. Rich with intrigue and filled with details of the constraints faced by seventeenth-century women, both well born and common, The Familiars offers a look into the real-life world of the notorious Pendle witch trials that ended with 11 executions. Amid suspicion and rumor, the bond born out of need between Fleetwood and Alice must survive the unforgiving obstacles they both face.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

DEBUT Halls's first novel is set against the backdrop of the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials and features 17-year-old noblewoman Fleetwood Shuttleworth, who is happily married and mistress of one of the greatest mansions in Lancashire. The only thing she lacks is an heir. After three miscarriages, Fleetwood is pregnant for the fourth time when she discovers a letter from a doctor to her husband, warning that she will not survive another pregnancy. Taking her health into her own hands, Fleetwood engages local midwife Alice Gray to help her deliver a healthy baby. But when Alice is implicated in the witch hunt sweeping the county and arrested, Fleetwood must find a way to save her friend, and by extension her own life, even if it means going against her husband and the town magistrates. VERDICT A relatable first-person narrator helps make the history of this thoroughly researched novel feel more approachable. A solid addition to all fiction collections, with teen appeal. [See Prepub Alert, 8/20/18.]--Lindsay Morton, P.L. of Science, San Francisco