Cunning Women
In 1620, a Lancashire hamlet lies abandoned, haunted by its many plague victims. A destitute family has found shelter in a hovel, shunned and feared by the nearby village. Mam is a cunning woman marked by a dark stain which makes her gifted in healing, potions, spells, and curses. Memories of recent witch trials and fear of being cursed cause the villagers to avoid this strange family, but their fear is overcome to make clandestine visits to Mam for her services and coin for the occasional meal. Sarah shares her mother’s mark, making her destined to also be a cunning woman. Headstrong young John steals bits of food from the local farmer while his sister, Sarah, frets over protecting littlest Annie from being approached by the evil one who will mark her too.
Daniel, the farmer’s son, is different than the brutal men around him. He is gentle, kind, and caring, feeling the pain of others—human and animal. When he meets Sarah, he is attracted to her wild hair and eyes “every colour of the sea.” Theirs becomes a tender love story. Sarah wants a peaceful life, to marry Daniel, and escape her fate in favor of “a life of light that leaves no place for such darkness.” She wants her beloved Annie to have enough to eat, to laugh and play among other children instead of the spirits of the dead in the plague hamlet. When a new magistrate comes to the village, he stirs up the people’s fear and hatred, hunting out insidious evil with disastrous results.
The author tells a compelling story of a village in the grips of superstition and susceptible to the influence of a radical witch hunter. The story moves slowly, but stay with it because it begins to build about halfway, and the book becomes hard to set aside.
