Product Description

Jennet Stearne's father hangs witches for a living in Restoration England. But when she witnesses the unjust and horrifying execution of her beloved aunt Isobel, the precocious child decides to make it her life's mission to bring down the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. Armed with little save the power of reason, and determined to see justice prevail, Jennet hurls herself into a series of picaresque adventures—traveling from King William's Britain to the fledgling American Colonies to an uncharted island in the Caribbean, braving West Indies pirates, Algonquin Indian captors, the machinations of the Salem Witch Court, and the sensuous love of a young Ben Franklin. For Jennet cannot and must not rest until she has put the last witchfinder out of business.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #478914 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Released on: 2007-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060821807
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Nine years in the making, Morrow's richly detailed, cerebral tale of rationality versus superstitious bigotry is set in late-17th-century London and colonial New England, a time when everyday actions were judged according to the rigid Parliamentary Witchcraft Act and suspect women were persecuted for alleged acts of sorcery. Inquisitive, "kinetic" Jennet Stearne, daughter of militant Witchfinder Gen. Walter Stearne, witnesses this pursuit of "Satanists" up close when her beloved maternal Aunt Isobel Mowbray, a philosopher and scientist, is put on trial and burned at the stake for her progressive ideas. Thirteen-year-old Jennet and her younger brother, Dunstan, immigrate with their now-infamous father to Massachusetts, where Walter (disgraced in England for executing his propertied sister-in-law) puts his "witchfinding" expertise into savage overdrive at the Salem witch trials. Abducted in a raid, Jennet spends seven years captive to the Algonquin Nimacook, until she's freed by and married to Boston postmaster Tobias Crompton. Years later, after a divorce (!), she becomes smitten (and enlightened) by a young Benjamin Franklin. For a metafictional touch to this intrepid, impeccably researched epic (after Blameless in Abaddon), Newton's Principia Mathematica speaks intermittently, its jaunty historical and critical commentary knitted cleverly into the narrative. This tour-de-force of early America bears a buoyant humor to lighten its macabre load. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–England in the late 17th century is an exciting–if dangerous–home for Jennet Stearne, a teen whose family is a microcosm of the country's philosophical and religious conflicts. Though she is enthralled by Isaac Newton's theories and her progressive Aunt Isobel's scientific experiments, she also takes pride in her father, Walter, who is a highly regarded professional witch-hunter. Jennet's filial piety and belief system are overturned abruptly when blameless Isobel is burned at the stake because Walter labels her a witch. The girl vows to prevent other unjust executions by using science to prove witchcraft nonexistent. Her stubborn quest goes on for decades, leading her into wild adventures that include being captured by pirates, becoming an adoptive Native American, witnessing the Salem witch craze, and carrying on an affair with the young Ben Franklin. Jennet and her companions dash through an energetic narrative that re-creates the period believably, thanks to the author's admirable linguistic and historical research. While the protagonist is an appealing character, the real star is Newton's Principia Mathematica, whose amusing commentary provides a new twist to notions about the power and endurance of the printed word. This is a clever literary fantasy costumed as a traditional historical novel and a treat for fiction lovers.–Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
James Morrow's novel about early American witchcraft pulls off so many dazzling feats of literary magic that in a different century he'd have been burned at the stake. Forget "The Crucible," Arthur Miller's dreary classic. Forget the repugnant kitsch of modern-day Salem. The Last Witchfinder flies us back to that thrilling period when scientific rationalism was dropped into the great cauldron of intellectual history, boiling with prejudice, tradition, piety and fear. The result is a fantastical story mixed so cunningly with real-life details that your vision of America's past may never awaken from Morrow's spell.

His heroine is Jennet Stearne, born in England in 1677. Her widower father is a "bald-headed, sweat-spangled practitioner of a vanishing trade." He's a witchfinder; he tests people accused of demonology. As a young girl, Jennet looks forward to the day when she might accompany him on this sacred work: pricking moles and warts, dropping bound prisoners into water, listening to frightened old women recite the Lord's Prayer. The Bible provides the authority -- "Thou must not suffer a witch to live" -- but winning a conviction is all a matter of careful, expert examination.

To assist him, Jennet's beloved aunt searches for more reliable physical symptoms of necromancy. A wealthy woman with a keen interest in the latest discoveries, including a radical outlook called "the scientific method," she leads Jennet through a study of physics and biology, peering through her new microscope at the innards of captured familiars. But "they hide their diabolism well," she notes with rising frustration, unable to find any convincing proof of Satanism among all the dissected cats and toads brought to her from witches' dens. Unfortunately, before she can articulate her budding skepticism of the whole enterprise, she's accused of witchcraft, convicted by Jennet's father and burned alive in one of the novel's many blistering scenes. Jennet witnesses the entire ordeal and hears her aunt's defiant cries on the pyre. In that moment, she takes the title "Lady Jennet, Hammer of Witchfinders," denounces her father and dedicates her life to proving that no such thing as witchcraft exists.

What follows over the next 400 pages is the story of her endlessly exciting quest. When Jennet's father is sent to Massachusetts, the assignment feels more like exile, but those dark woods are full of savages, and at "one guinea per detected Satanist," he hopes to make a fortune. Indeed, he arrives in the early 1690s and is quickly engaged to assist the Rev. Parris with an infestation of malevolence in Salem, one of the many real events that Morrow cleverly laces through his story. Jennet's father finds most of the proceedings hysterical and unorthodox (though not for the reasons we do), but her brother falls in love with Abigail Williams, the instigator of that famous paranoid tragedy, and together they take over his father's work throughout New England.

Jennet, meanwhile, continues collecting evidence, studying the latest scientific treatises and trying to compose an argumentum grande so lucid, so convincing, so illuminating that it can finally demolish the witchcraft laws that sent more than half a million people to their deaths in Europe. It's no easy task for a poor young woman alone in the world to take on the age's deepest fears, but she's an extraordinary blend of curiosity and passion. Morrow drives her through a gauntlet of adventures, from Indian attack to shipwreck, from desert island to jail, a grand picaresque tour of England and the American colonies.

Along the way, she interacts with some of the 17th century's most illustrious characters. Her long-delayed meeting with Sir Isaac Newton reveals the English scientist as a basket case of preoccupations and jealousies. Baron de Montesquieu is dazzled by her beauty and intelligence, even as he works out ideas that will later form the basis of our Constitution. But the most marvelous encounter is her relationship with a horny young printer named Ben Franklin. By this time, Jennet is old enough to be his mother, but Franklin, you'll remember, had a thing for older women: "They have more Knowledge of the World and . . . they are so grateful!!" Morrow brings Franklin alive here in all his delightful wit and enthusiasm. Together Jennet and Ben plumb the mysteries of electricity (both in the lab and, hilariously, in the bedroom) and dedicate their lives to explaining the apparently occult actions of nature: Why do the geese get sick? Why does the milk curdle? Why are men sometimes impotent? Morrow shows that their challenge is not just to present new evidence, but to change what their frightened peers consider evidence, to fundamentally shift the basis of thought. Their efforts eventually provoke a spectacular confrontation with the old world view, a conflict that threatens not only Jennet's lifework but also her life.

The most startling element of the novel, though, is its narrator -- so strange that I almost hesitate to mention it for fear you'll think I'm bewitched. Newton's Principia Mathematica tells this story of Jennet's life. It turns out that that seminal work of "natural philosophy," which formed the basis of classical mechanics, has a cheeky personality and an immortal consciousness wholly distinct from Newton. It's a weird act of personification that seems at first an intolerably cute bit of post-structural gamesmanship: "May I speak candidly," the narrator begins, "one rational creature to another, myself a book and you a reader?" But Morrow carries this off with such humor and heart that it quickly sounds like the most natural thing in the world to imagine books writing other books and watching history move through ghastly fits and starts. Most important, Morrow uses this strange narrator to frame Jennet's struggle in terms of the long battle between rationalism and superstition that's still being played out today.

The result is so enchanting that when I finished the novel, I sat for a moment wondering when I could visit Jennet's grave in Philadelphia. She's such an extraordinary character captured in the crucible of human progress that I can't imagine how we got here without her. Watch out for James Morrow: He's magic.

Reviewed by Ron Charles
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Stylish and smart with a fast-moving story
Shipwrecks, kidnappings, witch trials, illegitimate children, jars full of deformed creatures, humorous night-time encounters with Isaac Newton -- what's not to like? The Last Witchfinder covers thousands of miles in space and decades in time, deftly considers slavery, electricity, the spread of the Enlightenment and the battle between reason and science, and wraps it all up in a story that made me stay up late several nights in succession. I'd never read a word by Morrow before this book, and if the rest of his novels are like this one I'm going to read them all.

Audacious and Most Brilliant (Warning: More Superlatives Will Follow)
First of all, let may share my shock that there are not hundreds of Amazon reviews singing the praises of this delightful book to the heavens.

For anyone unfamiliar with James Morrow's wildly inventive mind, the opening chapters of THE LAST WITCHFINDER are an audacious revelation. Such brio! Such wit! And with his novel's frankly amazing conceit (it sounds ridiculous when synopsized, but basically, books can write books), I, jaded reader that I am, will confess to being a bit enraptured with this tome.

While no writer, Morrow included, could possibly have kept up the astounding level of quality of his opening, THE LAST WITCHFINDER still stands as a paragon of whimsical and instructive historical fiction. I have no interest in reprising its plot; in fact, I am still in a bit of a funk at the injustice of this book seemingly garnering so little attention.

I'm clutching at straws, but this may be a by-product of the book's cover (too drab?) or its seeming Puritanically-minded topic. Rest assured that not only is this novel top-notch literary entertainment, it is also a series of enlightening and amusing discussions on the nature of science, religion, democratic republics, culture, and, well, I think you get the idea.

And I can't recommend it any more highly than that. Thank you, James Morrow.

Very good novel on many levels
James Morrow's The Last Witchfinder is many things at once. It's both a wonderfully researched and detailed historical novel and a great adventure story. It combines philosophy, theology, and science with Indian raids, shipwrecks, and pirates. It mixes extremely touching moments, some very sad moments, and moments of wit and humor. And it combines a narrative style fitting the time of the story - the late 1600s and early 1700s - with the postmodern conceit of having the book purport to be written by another book (complete with interludes of the book - Newton's Principia - addressing the audience).

Jennet Stearne is the daughter of a witchfinder in England. Her brother wants to follow in her father's footsteps, but she is of a more scientific bent. Under the tutelage of her aunt, she takes in an interest in all forms of natural philosophy - astronomy, physics, biology, and so on - and develops a good scientific mind. But when her aunt is accused and then condemned for witchcraft, Jennet dedicates her life to one thing: scientifically proving that the world isn't controlled by demons but rather by natural forces.

Jennet tries to recruit Isaac Newton, only to be tricked by Robert Hooke, masquerading as Newton. She decides to pursue her studies on her own, but things change when her father is sent to America. A series of adventures follow, in which Jennet witnesses the Salem Witch Trials (strengthening her resolve), is kidnapped by Indians and becomes part of tribe, escapes, meets Ben Franklin, eventually meets Newton himself, is shipwrecked, faces pirates, and is eventually herself tried for witchcraft. At the same time, her brother ascends to the post of witchfinder general for Massachusetts and marries the most hysterical accuser from the Salem trials. It's a remarkable sequence, combining as it does such great adventure with a serious examination of the issues involving faith, fundamentalism, and basic world views.

Morrow came to Pittsburgh a while back and read from The Last Witchfinder. When he did, he talked about how one of the things that got him thinking about the book was something he'd read (sorry, I don't remember the author) which stated that, if you look at the Renaissance, it's not best viewed as a time of a great explosion of reason but rather as a demon-obsessed time. Most everyone viewed the world as being strongly influenced by demons and spirits. Common natural phenomena were thought to be under the control of such invisible forces. Moreover, human beings were thought to traffic with Satan and be able to direct these demons. Someone's milk has gone sour? Well, he can remember when, two weeks earlier, he sold somewhat bad grain to the old woman up the road. She must be a witch who was getting back at him; how else explain the bad milk.

Witch finding was rationalized. The witchfineders used logic, arguing from a few lines in the bible, to build a huge rationale for what they were doing as well as a series of tests to prove that someone was a witch. The tests seem utterly nonsensical to us, but they were taken very seriously and more so considered completely rational by those who used them. The result was carnage over parts of Europe, with possibly several hundred thousand people killed over several centuries. (It was far worse in Central and Eastern Europe than it ever got in Western Europe or England.) Morrow does a good job of working these details into the novel.

The real heart of the novel though is the character of Jennet Stearne. She's a remarkably well drawn and interesting character (as well as the type of person many of us would like to know). She's smart, resourceful, brave, and never dull. I'm not sure if the comparison quite holds, but she in some ways can be viewed as a Heinlein "competent man" (in which case her aunt also fits in Heinleinesqe sort of way).

While Morrow clearly takes aim at the witchfinders and those who believe the world is under the control of demons, it's not the same sort of biting satire as in his novels like Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah. He skewers them in a much more straightforward way, simply by showing their world views and actions. At the same time, he makes it clear that it's not religion he's attacking - it's fanaticism. Many of the characters we side with in the book are religious - they're just not fanatic fundamentalists.

That's not to say that book doesn't have moments of humor. It has a number of quite amusing moments, ranging from Jennet's dealing with the book left to her by her aunt (a sex manual her aunt had written) to her and Ben's encounter with the pirates. (The head pirate, discovering them shipwrecked on an island and finding out that Ben is a printer, immediately says "I have this manuscript ...") And the scene where Jennet and Ben first make love is a classic.

As I noted earlier, Morrow structures the book as having been written by the Principia. I wasn't sure what to make of this at first - was it an addition or an unnecessary distraction. At first, I was leaning toward the latter, but as the novel progressed, it became clear that this technique was a novel way to allow both for info dumps and for some degree of editorializing without actually injecting this into the main novel. The Principia, for example, interrupts the novel to provide a couple of pages on the history of witch finding. So, in the end, I think these interruptions mostly worked (though a few could have been trimmed back a bit).

In the end, this is a fine novel that works well on a number of levels and should be of interest to those who like historical, those interested in the birth of the scientific worldview, or even those who just want a good adventure story, since it's all of these and more.