Noteworthy Passages: Wicked Girls

Wicked Girls by Stephanie Hemphill
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Pub. Date: July 1st, 2010
Pages: 416
Age Level: 13+

Synopsis
Wicked Girls is a fictionalized account of the Salem witch trials based on the real historical characters, told from the perspective of three young women living in Salem in 1692—Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam Jr.

When Ann’s father suggests that a spate of illnesses within the village is the result of witchcraft, Ann sees an opportunity and starts manifesting the symptoms of affliction. Ann looks up to Mercy, the beautiful servant in her parents' house. She shows Mercy the power that a young girl is capable of in a time when women were completely powerless. Mercy, who suffered abuse at the hands of past masters, seizes her only chance at safety. And Ann’s cousin Margaret, anxious to win the attention of a boy in her sights, follows suit. As the accusations mount against men and women in the community, the girls start to see the deadly ramifications of their actions. Should they finally tell the truth? Or is it too late to save this small New England town?

Noteworthy Passages

Narrator; pg. 1
Silent, not even the twitter
of insects. The wind stills
against a distant sky of clouds.
The cold is gray and fierce,
bitter as a widow at the grave.
The trees' bare bony fingers
point crookedly
toward Heaven or Hell
or worse than that, toward nowhere.

Incantation of the Girls; pg. 143
Sour voices on the wind
name us liars, say we sin.
Listen not
to girls but men.

For the witches we do name
pass their days in public shame
or come from families
Putnams blame.

So if we girls shall keep our place
we'll see some witches none can trace,
folk we've never
seen of face.

Mercy Lewis; pg. 214
Out the window an owl,
the king of the night,
blinks his gray-green eyes.
He cries plaintive hoots,
then spreads his wings
and twists his sorrowful neck,
as though he might dive
from his perch
and bury himself
once and for all
in the underbrush.

Mercy Lewis; pg. 328
Though the mosquitoes
bite fierce and the hour falls
deep in the belly of the night,
I do sneak from the house.
I cannot be contained.
I crunch through the thicket.
I pat my thigh
three times calling
for the ghost of my dog,
the only one who really cared
for me in this town,
now rotting in a shallow grave.
I faint back into leaves
loosed from fat-trunked trees
and bury myself.
I wish to find family
somewhere, even if it's underground.

~~~~~~~~

The last one, from pg. 328, was my absolute favorite; there was something about it that was just so lyrically haunting, chilling, and sad. Hope these passages will make you want to pick up the book and in case you haven't read it yet, you can check out my review HERE.









PLEASE NOTE: This is a feature hosted here at my blog in which I present you with selected passages or quotes that I deem Noteworthy from a book I've just reviewed. My hopes are of course, that these passages will make you want to pick the book up and read it. This feature was started and created by me in January in hopes of making my blog more unique. That being said, I would like to kindly request that you do not use this feature as it was intended to be for my blog only and is not a meme. If you see some one else using it, please know it is without my permission. Thank you.