Title: My Enemy’s
Tears
Author: Karen
Vorbeck Williams
After 20 years of research and writing, Karen put her
family history into novel form. My Enemy’s Tears: The Witch of Northampton is
based on the historical record of her 11th great-grandmother Mary Bliss Parsons
and Mary’s arch enemy Sarah Lyman Bridgeman. Their lives trace the journey of
not only the English Separatists to the New World and the growth of the first
settlements along the Connecticut River from Hartford and Springfield to
Northampton, but the lives of women in 17th century New England as well.
The Puritans in Hartford find the wilderness a terrifying
place full of warring natives, pestilences and floods, blazing comets,
earthquakes and hurricanes—all portents of God’s anger - or a witch’s meddling
curse.
The two women spend their married lives in the villages
of Springfield and Northampton, where a youthful disagreement festers into a
reason to hate and then fear each other. In a time when a woman’s worth and a
man’s wealth were counted in sons, Sarah’s sons died in infancy as Mary gave
birth to six sons, one after another. Sarah believed that since Mary was a
witch, she made a trade-off with the Devil – her living children for Sarah’s
dead children. As the years pass, Sarah accuses Mary of murder by witchcraft,
prompting a trial before the Court of Assistants in Boston in 1675—17 years
before the Salem witch trials.
My Enemy’s Tears looks at two lives—one blessed and one
cursed—and the transcendent power of forgiveness.
Praise: "Beautifully
written, well researched, riveting."
—Patricia Cumming,
poet, founding member of Alice James Books
Other reviews:
Publisher: Published October 15th 2011 by Wheatmark
(first published January 1st 2011)
ISBN: 9781604946284
Pages: 450
Synopsis: In
the 1630s two young girls fresh from England settle with their families in the
Connecticut River Valley. There, on the frontier of a terrifying wilderness
surrounded by warring natives, they must face the rigors of life among the
Puritans -- a people steeped in superstition and piety. Based on the lives of
Mary Bliss Parsons and Sarah Lyman Bridgeman and the men they loved, this
fictional account of a true story transports us to a land founded on a dream,
where life was uncertain, and where fear and jealousy would lead to ruin.
Author Biography:
KAREN VORBECK WILLIAMS has lived more
than thirty-five years in New England where she found the inspiration,
settings, and spirit for "My Enemy's Tears: The Witch of
Northampton," historical fiction based on the life of her ancestor Mary
Bliss Parsons. This is her first novel. She's been an editor for fourteen years
and is a prize-winning photographer.
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