Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

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.