A review by literaryjunarin
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

dark sad slow-paced

4.5

"Guilt is a ghost that takes the shape of the body it inhabits and consumes all that is tender within its shell."

A book worth 40 pesos from Booksale turned me bawling at the last pages. 

You know that feeling when you read a historical book and you can't quite believe that humans can be so cruel, it's maddening. And then see the news and think that wow, humans are really capable of that insanity. 

This book is about the Salem witch trials from 1692 but it started slowly with the day-to-day life of Sarah Carrier, daughter of Martha Carrier who would be hanged after being accused as a witch. Kent's storytelling is so vivid that I felt I was with the Carrier family on that farm. I was harvesting wheat, milking the cow, and later on, I was with them in the prison, starving, filthy, living in palpable horror knowing what was to come. 

I cried while reading the book and cried some more after turning the lights off to sleep.