Conversion: Katherine Howe

This book was similar to the Physic Book of Deliverance Dane in that it goes back and forth from the present to the time of the witch trials. This book, however, was written for teen readers. Several girls in a modern day Catholic school start getting twitches and have seizure-like episodes. The book then flashed back to the late 1600's to the girls who accused their town of witch craft. Weaving back and forth, the narrator, Coleen makes the connection between the witchcraft trails from the book she is reading for class, The Crucible, and what is happening at her school. Girls start getting tics and losing their hair. They have body wracking coughs and cough up pins. The school tries to convince the community it was a reaction from a vaccine the girls had all gotten recently. The media tries to make it out as a contamination/pollution incident. Collen starts to wonder if it has something to do with a friend, who was dating a teacher. As the story builds we hear a confession from Anne Putnam about how the witch trails started. In this novel, it was all from a little girl trying to get out of her chores and other girls saw how effective it was and did the same. The book showed how easy and quickly things got out of control. Coleen realizes the pain her friend Clara is going through is being pushed outward from her to those close to her. They end up getting physically ill. By the end everyone is happy again and heading off to college. Either I missed the part about the relationship between the teacher and student, or it actually did come to an end…I didn’t really like how that seemed glorified and dreamy to a student. That part disturbed me.