RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBeth Underdown’s darkly resonant novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister, explores another time and another place to lay bare the visceral horror of what a witch hunt truly is ... If Alice’s way of thinking sometimes threatens to dilute the authenticity of her historical world, it also serves as a bridge to our own. She (and we) can identify the malignant, miasmic forces at work — the ways in which, in a society under stress, fear becomes contagious and collective when projected outward onto the powerless 'other' — even as she is drawn into a horrifying complicity with the spreading violence over which her brother presides ... Beth Underdown knows her history, but in this ominous, claustrophobic novel the past is haunted by the possibilities of our frightening present.
