Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

Imagine living in a world where Satan is as real as your neighbor. Imagine living in a world where Hell is a place as tangible as the Boston wharves. Imagine living in a world where you’re wondering constantly whether you’re saved or damned. And then. . .imagine you’re a woman and the community believes you’re a witch. That was what led me down the narrative path that resulted in HOUR OF THE WITCH.

Never did they ask the question Why me? In truth, they never even asked the more reasonable question Why anyone?

How do we, even now, make sense of the horrors that unfold every day, from genocide to pandemics to packed ferries that sink and airplanes that augur into the ground? For the seventeenth-century Puritans, whose lives were often (yes) mean, nasty, brutish, and short, the answers were sometimes found in the devil and the humans he enticed here on earth. They worked to please their God and keep Satan at bay, and, invariably, they were going to fail. The truth is, I’ve been interested in Puritan theology since college and still have my books from the courses I took. How did a desire to build a city on a hill go so horribly wrong in so many ways? The answer exists as much in the universals of human nature as it does in the particulars of their religion.

How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

The Puritans were avid diarists and spectacularly introspective. And why not? They believed that their fate – heaven or hell – was preordained (predestination), and so they were always looking for signs of whether they were among the elect. Now, although HOUR OF THE WITCH is a third person novel, every scene is from the perspective of Mary Deerfield. We are always in her head. And so she does have a “voice,” and that voice comes from the first European poet on the continent and one of my muses: Anne Bradstreet. (Among my others? Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver.) Bradstreet shows that the Puritans were not always dour and dark. Her poetry is beautiful and human. She chronicles her deep and passionate love for her husband, the despair she felt when a grandchild died, her sadness at the loss of her personal library, and even her doubts about her faith. When I was crafting Mary’s inner voice, I always used Anne Bradstreet as my touchstone. And that passage above? It seems emblematic of Bradstreet’s thoughtfulness and intellectual rigor.

She stood up as straight and tall as she could, and then, looking down upon him, said, “Thou art drink-drunk, and all I’m hearing is the hard cider and beer talking. If thou dost want the pewter, I will get thee pewter.”

A lot of the plot revolves around the three-tined fork, which the Puritans did not use. That led me to some of the most unexpected research findings: what was a Puritan meal like? Well, they didn’t use forks. They used knives and spoons and their hands. They had plates, but they were more likely to be eating out of a wooden trencher – a mini pig’s trough that two people would share. And they drank beer like it was spring break in Miami. Finally, they ate a lot of lobster because it was so common. Lobster was their bologna. So, imagine the scene: a bunch of drunk European immigrants eating lobster from trenchers without using forks. It was a party.

She really didn’t like Thomas Deerfield. She didn’t like anything about him. Some days, in fact, she loathed him.

Thomas Deerfield is, in some ways, a classically abusive spouse. (This is the second novel I’ve written about domestic violence, the other being SECRETS OF EDEN.) He is condescending and cruel and violent, but he knows how to mask the horrors he inflicts upon Mary, beating her where the bruises won’t show and reserving his verbal barbs for when they are alone. Just like Mary, I loathe him.

Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.

I was fascinated by the idea that the Puritans viewed marriage entirely as a civil covenant or contract -- not a religious ceremony -- and allowed divorce. It was not common, but 31 times couples divorced in 17th century Massachusetts, and half of them were initiated by women. And there were five reasons why a Puritan woman could divorce her husband: desertion, adultery, polygamy, cruelty, and (wait for it) impotence. Of those 31 divorces, one was for impotence and one was for cruelty. It was Nanny Naylor's divorce of her husband on the grounds of cruelty in 1672 that really enticed me down the research rabbit hole that led to the structure of this novel.

“And always better a scrivener than an attorney. I know more and more people are resorting to those appalling advocates who twist and trick, but many of the magistrates still view them with justifiable disdain.”

The Puritans weren’t wild about lawyers, (even though many of the Puritan leaders had some legal training). They expected people to speak for themselves in court. But they were comfortable with scriveners who rounded up the depositions. I found it fascinating that a theocracy with that many laws and such a legal foundation demeaned attorneys. Life is nothing if not ironic.

“I have heard it argued that prayer does not change God’s mind; rather, it changes us.”

I once heard an interim pastor say something like this in a sermon, and it stayed with me. I pray, but I try to view it as a way of reminding myself that I am not the center of the universe, and instead need to focus on others and their needs. Prayer, when viewed this way, is a less a letter to Santa Claus and more a reminder that we should do what we can for others.

Yes, she thought, revenge belongs to God. But justice? That will be mine.

I never know where my books are going. I never have an outline. But this moment? THIS was the paragraph where I understood Mary Deerfield’s ferocity and drive and brilliance. We think she is broken and done. Nope. She is not going to accept the ruling of the Court of Assistants; she is not going to live her life with a brute; she is going to fight for her rights as a human being. I love Mary, and it was moments like this when I bowed before her courage.

“She was sent to the scaffold because she had a sharper tongue and a shrewder mind than her accusers. It is always the case when men hang women. Look at Magistrate Caleb Adams: there is nothing that frightens that man more than a woman who does not live happily under a man’s thumb.”

Caleb Adams was inspired in part by Cotton Mather. But I was writing a lot of this novel during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings, and all of the men who denigrated or didn't take Christine Blasey Ford seriously were also an influence on this character’s behavior. And, yes, when Caleb calls Mary Deerfield "a nasty woman," I knew the insult would have echoes in our recent political -- and I use this word sarcastically -- discourse.

“Men call bright women dim whenever they are threatened. So, take no relief in the names that any man calls thee. There is no safe harbor there.”

If you wanted to be hanged in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, be female, smart, and opinionated. That was the trifecta that led to the noose. (Among my favorite books I read while researching this novel was Carol Karlsen’s THE DEVIL IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN. It’s fantastic – and gets bonus points for a great title.) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/982462.The_Devil_in_the_Shape_of_a_Woman And yet one of the ways that men diminish women today was common then, too: demean their intellect.

There were people in the world who were good and people who were evil, but most of them were some mixture of both and did what they did simply because they were mortal. And her Lord? Peregrine’s Lord? He knew it all and had known it all and always would know it all. But the deliberations of His creations? Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Still, there was one thing of which she was certain. “Oh, I think we do know,” Mary said finally. “Yes, this may be the hour of the witch. But the Devil? He most definitely wears breeches. The Devil can only be a man.”

There are so many parts of this passage that COULD have been the title of this novel. You can see the one that we chose: HOUR OF THE WITCH. But this is a novel, in my opinion, about strong women and feckless men. Or evil men. To paraphrase Taylor Swift, the “F--- the patriarchy keychain” is on the ground – but in this case, it’s a gauntlet that has been thrown.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I love writing and reading historical fiction. And when I write it, I always do my homework. You want to sweat the details and get it right because – to paraphrase John Gardner – you never want to wake the reader from the fictional dream. And right now there are so many great historical novels out there. (I’m not going to pick a favorite because most of my friends are writers and I never want to hurt someone’s feelings. But surf around: there are deeply moving and surprising ones out there.) My next novel, THE LIONESS, is also historical fiction and arrives in May 2022. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58756647-the-lioness Imagine OUT OF AFRICA meets AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. Or THE POISONWOOD BIBLE meets Natalie Wood. It’s 1964, and Hollywood’s biggest star finally gets married, and brings her entire entourage with her on a honeymoon safari into the Serengeti – where they are abducted by Russian mercenaries and it seems that, one by one, they are either going to be eaten or killed. Yes, it’s a thriller, but I hope it also an examination of race and fame, in a world on the cusp of change.