The Witch’s Daughter
‘My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. If you will listen, I will tell you a tale of witches.’ As an introduction to a character, this is hard to resist. Elizabeth (Bess) saw her mother hanged for witchcraft in 1628. Only the warlock and practitioner of dark magic, Gideon Masters, could save her from the same fate. He trains her in magic but wants her for his own. Bess escapes him but he continues to search for her through time. The present-day Elizabeth Hardwick lives in a small English village, keeping herself to herself, until she befriends a lonely teenager Tegan and reveals the story of her life. But Gideon is still pursuing her.
Brackston draws believable characters, and Elizabeth is a heroine you just have to root for, fighting to protect Tegan as well as herself from the forces of evil. The plot is faced paced and enthralling. We visit the 17th, the 19th, the early 20th, and the 21st centuries, with each one convincingly and vividly drawn. A great mix of historical fiction and fantasy.
