“I will stand by you. You must not be afraid. This is a brave land, Susanna, founded by brave people who never shrank from their duty or their vision of freedom. But this land has a future only if each of us stands up for what is right when it is given us to do so.”
― Ann Rinaldi, A Break with Charity: A Story about the Salem Witch Trials

review to follow soon.

I really enjoyed this haunting book about the Salem Witch Trials. I found it a very interesting read.

The author combines real events with fiction to produce an achingly sad and beautifully written tale of evil. I loved the book.

I should say it started slow. But it gathered in momentum and I could not tear my eyes from the pages. But this is a book that is a slow burn. There are alot of characters and many have the same name which made it rather con fusing but once you get past that one has quite an interesting read.

Every character in this book is non fiction. Some of their actions have been re imagined by the author and at the end there is additional information from the author explaining what is true and what is imagined. That added to the story greatly.

My favorite book on the Salem witch trials will always be "The Witch of blackbird pond" which is one of my favorite books in general but A Break with Charity is beautifully written with descriptive prose.

You almost feel like you are there. It helped that I was in Massachusetts at the time I read this at an inn with the ocean right behind me. So I read this with the sounds of the sea behind me and the smell of New England all around me. The experience was a great one and I would encourage anyone at all interested in the subject matter to read this book. ( )

This book is set during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and features Susanna English, who yearns to be apart of the girls' circle that meets at the Reverend's house. The girls shun her though and when Susanna figures out that they are naming people that the leader of the circle, Ann, doesn't like as witches, they threaten her with naming her parents as witches. What will Susanna do? This book is great for a history class to read in conjunction with Language Arts classes that are reading The Crucible. The kids could do research on some of the key historical figures and their role of what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Although this story is Historical Fiction, some of the key characters are true to history. ( )

This book was truly a treat when I started it, I thought it would be like any other Salem book, starts out all nice explaining what happened then explaining what happened in result of it all. I was not excpeting an entire story out of the events, even though it was fiction I still felt like that was what could of happened and we just don't know about it. This book is filled with mysteries and wickness, a great mixture together. Rinaldi did a really amazing job writing this book. ( )

In 1692 in Salem Massachusetts, 22 people were executed for being witches. One by one, these people have been accused by a group of teenage girls, and the townspeople have listened to them. In turn, the accused witches are hanged, stoned, or drowned, and the town keeps turning back to these girls to identify more witches. This book tells the story of the girls who started the Salem witch trials. ( )

The first Rinaldi book I ever read, picked up while on a day trip to Salem. She did such a good job with the story, making her version of the Witch hysteria entirely plausible, that I become hooked on her as an author. ( )