The Salty Rose: Alchemists, Witches, & A Tapper In New Amsterdam

Connecticut Witch Trials Trilogy #2

by Beth M. Caruso

Marie du Trieux, a tavern keeper with a salty tongue and a heart of gold, struggles as she navigates love and loss, Native wars, and possible banishment by authorities in the unruly trading port of New Amsterdam, an outpost of the Dutch West India Company. In New England, John Tinker, merchant and assistant to a renowned alchemist and eventual leader of Connecticut Colony, must come to terms with a family tragedy of dark proportions, all the while supporting his mentor’s secret quest to find the Northwest Passage, a desired trading route purported to mystically unite the East with the West. As the lives of Marie and John become intertwined through friendship and trade, a search for justice of a Dutch woman accused of witchcraft in Hartford puts them on a collision course affecting not only their own destinies but also the fate of colonial America.

Genres: Historical Fiction

308 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2019

About the author

Award-winning author and researcher, Beth M Caruso, has been involved in efforts to educate the public about the Connecticut witch trials through her written work and exoneration efforts. She is the author of the Connecticut Witch Trials Trilogy. She is the first and ONLY human author thus far to write about Alice 'Alse' Young and her daughter.
Beth’s first historical novel One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging (2015), tells the tale of Alice ‘Alse’ Young and the beginnings of New England’s colonial witch trials. The Salty Rose: Alchemists, Witches & A Tapper In New Amsterdam (2019) won the literary prize in Genre Fiction (2020) from IPNE (Independent Publishers of New England) and explores John Winthrop the Younger’s influence on stopping the witch trials in Connecticut, also giving an insider’s view of the takeover of the Dutch colony of New Netherland and the Hartford Witch Panic. Her latest novel, the final sequel to One of Windsor, titled Between Good & Evil: Curse of the Windsor Witch’s Daughter (2024) explores the trauma of Alice’s daughter, Alice Young Beamon, and Windsor’s second witch accusations against Lydia Gilbert.
Since 2015, Beth has been educating the public about the Connecticut witch trials through lectures, articles, and social media. Beth co-authored with historian, Dr. Katherine Hermes, the academic article “Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647-1693.” which appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Connecticut History Review (61:2).
In 2016, she co-founded CT WITCH Memorial with Tony Griego to raise awareness about the witch trials. She is also a co-founder of the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project that helped to pass Resolution HJ 34 in the Connecticut General Assembly in May 2023 to acknowledge Connecticut’s witch trial victims. Beth also serves on the board of End Witch Hunts, an advocacy group seeking recognition and justice for witch trial victims of past and present.

Website: www.oneofwindsor.com

Email: oneofwindsor@yahoo.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bethmcaruso/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-m-ca...

Reviews

[Patricia Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. The Salty Rose is a fascinating account of Manhattan's Dutch colonial history and life and leadership in New Amsterdam and Connecticut. Having grown up in Manhattan's Lower East Side and recognizing the names and places, the colonial history of the area came to life for me. Thank you Beth Caruso for such a thoroughly researched and fascinating story.

[Susanne Aspley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caruso’s years of research plus vivid storytelling makes colonial history come alive. And if you haven’t read her first book, One of Windsor, highly recommend that one also.

[Beth Caruso]

WINNER of the Genre Fiction category for the 2020 Independent Publishers of New England Book Awards

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good historical fiction piece. There is a lot of history here. Well-researched too. More importantly, the author has taken this and made it into a story full of emotion, a picture of life in hard times, some unfairness, and some good times too. A readable flowing story that really kept my interest.

I also liked the POV narrated by Marie, owner of The Salty Rose. I actually thought this story would be about a salty or shall we say “tough old” lady bar owner. In some ways it was. Marie was strong and tough in her own ways to have handled the things she did.

There were a lot of characters in this story. I didn’t have trouble keeping track of “who was whom” so to speak but I did wonder if it would have been easier had I read the first book, One of Windsor. From the description it doesn’t sound like this is a continuance but I’m not sure.

Overall I felt this was a good read that was definitely reading time well spent. I’m going to research to find out if Beth Caruso’s first book is a stand-alone also. If so, I intend to read it.

[Peter Herrmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read ... enjoyable and historical (aligns well with Russell Shorto's book 'Island at the Center of the World' that I'd read many years ago). As a native/former New Yorker .. whose first history lesson was in 4th grade, where the curriculum [at least back then] covered the New Amsterdam era... and a present day (long time) resident of central CT who has read alot about our 17th Century witch frenzy - I could esp. appreciate the author's research and the story. The cover art work (by Sue Tait Porcaro) was original and well done (imho).

[Doug Ketterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read The Salty Rose and really enjoyed it. The reason that I wanted to read it is because Rebecca Truex, sister of the main character in the book is an ancestor of mine and I was hoping that maybe I would learn a little more about her from the book. I can't say I learned any more than what I already knew but I did learn about New Netherland life in the colonial period and the ties to Windsor, Connecticut took me back to Ancestry.com to see if any of my other ancestors were connected to this story. They were and it made it even more interesting.

[Terry Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story, very well researched. I don't think I've ever read a book about this period in early American history. Although it's a fictitious story, many of the side characters were real people. The author weaves the real and imagined well. I found the repetitive mention of long names a little tedious, but otherwise, this was an engaging book.

[Terry Tracz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about colonial history, some of which I don’t remember learning in school, with some great plot lines and well developed characters to go with it.