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My Starry Rating: 4/5 Stars
Reason for Rating: Moving story that made me self-reflect
What I Learned: You can experience a fulfilling life in silence, and that when you say less and observe more you learn so much.
Cover Rating: 3/5 Stars- could have been more creative
Publication Date: October 15, 2024 by Sibylline Press
Genres: Historical Fiction
DESCRIPTION:
“I am no witch, nor adulteress, thief, nor murderer. They say I have lost my reason, but I know only that my heart is shattered, and in crying it aloud, now I must pay the cost….”
After three grievous losses, Puritan woman Silence Marsh dares to question God aloud in the church, and that blasphemy lands her in trouble—she is silenced for a year by the powers that be. Broken in heart and spirit, Silence learns to mime and sign, but it isn’t until a new Boston doctor, the dashing Daniel Greenleaf, comes to her backward Cape Cod village that she begins to hope again. Rather than treating Silence with bleeding or leeches, Dr. Greenleaf prescribes fresh air, St. John’s Wort, long walks—and reading.
Silence has half a hope of getting through her year of punishment when the cry of witchcraft poisons the village. Colonial Massachusetts is still reeling from the Salem Witch Trials just 20 years before. Now, after demanding her silence, she is called to witness at a witchcraft trial—or be accused herself.
A whiff of sulfur and witchcraft shadows this literary Puritan tale of loss and redemption, based on the author’s own ancestor, her seventh great-grandmother.
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REVIEW:
Silence by Julia Parker Tracey is a Puritan story about a young woman named Silence Marsh who is persecuted for her grief and punished to one year of silence. Through her muted sentence, Silence comes to learn a lot about herself, life, love, and healing.
I have always enjoyed reading books about the Puritan’s as there are many connecting threads from their time to our world today. This book did not focus on witchcraft, although it was a bygone threat that still found ways to permeate the community. Silence Marsh was an admirable woman, who honoured her morals, values, and rights even in the face of danger and death. This story explored the unspoken, what is said, what is unsaid, and how choosing to speak or not speak the truth can have dire consequences. I thought the author did a terrific job at writing an authentic story, with its language and historical details that I am sure required a lot of research. It felt as though I were reading an archival diary.
I found it fascinating that this story is based on one of the author’s ancestors. I hope in writing this story, Silence Marsh can know that she has not been forgotten, that she matters, and that we the readers can understand just how powerful silence, whether forced or chosen truly is.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a free arc via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Author Julia Park Tracey’s ancestors and their stories have given her a trail to follow from New York and New England to the deep south and the Pacific Coast. The Bereaved: A Novel, the story of her great great grandmother’s loss of her children to the Orphan Train was named in the top 100 indie books published in 2023 by Kirkus Reviews. Christian Kiefer, author of the newly released The Heart of it All, said: “In The Bereaved, Julia Park Tracey reopens America’s wounds in prose that is propulsive and resonant. Theodore Dreiser comes to mind, but so, too, the fine contemporary novels of Jo Baker and Maggie O’Farrell.”
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