Katherine Howe's The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Howe, a grad student in early American history who is the descendant of two of the accused witches of Salem, has written a novel about a grad student in early American history who is the descendant of one of the other Salem witches (I think it's ok to say that, though the protagonist doesn't figure it out till the very end, since it's super-obvious to the reader), who actually did do magic. Anyway, I think I would have really enjoyed this story (despite its very weird and lame villain and its too-good-to-be-true love interest), b/c you know I like stories involving historical research, except that there was all of this weird anti-librarian sentiment that distracted me. Like almost every librarian/archivist is rude, grumpy, and unhelpful. And the protagonist is able to browse the stacks of Harvard's special collections, and even TAKE 300-YEAR-OLD BOOKS HOME. WTF! Is Howe really a grad student? If so, she doesn't use the library much. I can't believe Harvard lets people just casually peruse delicate books like that. If so, they're a pretty crappy institution.
So you can see why I had trouble with this book. I think otherwise it was en entertaining beach read type of story. B.
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