Books editor Claire Mabey talks with Margaret Meyer, whose historical novel about a brutal witch trial was the subject of a bidding war – a rare sort of publishing magic that can occasionally change an author’s life. The accused women deny their charges, but no one believes them. The witch trials are a sham. The scales of justice are already tipped, the women indicted on manufactured evidence and false charges by Makepeace, the searchers and vindictive neighbours looking for plausible explanations for illness, death and misfortune. As she had feared, Martha, too, is eventually arrested. All it takes is one bad apple to spread his evil and poof the whole village is frightened and in an uproar. The other thing from perhaps a more feminist perspective is that the witch has always represented an affront to patriarchy. The witch won’t die: the archetype just won’t lie down. I think there’s a strong parallel between this figure and what is happening right around the world. We’re all watching an erosion of women’s rights in one form or another and the witch kind of symbolises all of that. She pops up again, in different centuries in different guises. The powerlessness of the accused women and the hopelessness of their plights is rendered in harrowing, unsparing detail. It would be difficult to read The Witching Tide and not be emotionally affected by the monstrous injustices perpetrated on Martha and the other accused women.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer: A harrowing and

A hammer of thoughts in her head; the doll in her fingers, which now she dropped, as if it had stung her. What was it really, this deformity she had woken? What had she woken in herself? She squashed her hands together, as in prayer. Forgive me, forgive my trespass, O Lord. Wax flaked from her fingers. The doll was for using, that was its truth, the essence of its nature. As much as she feared it, she needed it.I loved the realism in regards to the way women were persecuted during the witch scares. The author did a fantastic job of showing how religious fear and petty arguments among neighbors turned to wild accusations of witchcraft. We were given a vivid portrait of how; helpless the accused were throughout the process. Overall, I was not fond of the writing style. There are several choppy sentences, as well as a lot of repetitiveness. While I do find these things to be effective in poetry, I rarely find they hold the same weight in fictional prose. I do feel the writing quality had some commendable points, but it failed to reach the heights of its literary ambition.

The witch won’t die’: Margaret Meyer on writing The Witching ‘The witch won’t die’: Margaret Meyer on writing The Witching

Meyer evokes the uncanniness, the appalling cruelties of the witch trials in a way that is also thoroughly humane. To read this book is to step inside time, to feel the bite of the sea air, to walk in the grime alongside Martha as she fights the tide of suspicion. It is a powerful, riveting read, each sentence pristine and haunting.” — Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory Kate Stephenson, the newly-appointed senior publisher at Hachette Aotearoa NZ, will publish simultaneously in New Zealand. North American rights have sold to Nan Graham and Kara Watson at Scribner US. The book has sold in five translation territories. East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant, has lived for more than four decades in her beloved coastal village of Cleftwater. Everyone knows Martha, but no one has ever heard her speak. Martha is a mute servant woman, who also acts as the village’s midwife. The rumors begin flying just as the witchfinder comes to Cleftwater. Soon, everything is being laid at various women’s feet - dead babies, bad winter weather, illnesses, sunken ships, dead animals. No one stops to think how such a small village could hold so many witches. Guards from other towns are brought in and the gaol runs out of space. And then, Martha is corralled into helping examine the women for marks of the devil. It’s easy to empathize with Martha, especially since we get a front seat view to her innermost thoughts. She finds joy in caring for Kit, her employer, who she has raised since she was a baby, and kind of views as her own family. Working as a midwife and healer, she interacts with basically everyone in the village. There’s a sense of foreshadowing throughout the story, probably because I already know how witch trials went. But Martha and her friend deliver a baby with a cleft palate, which was a fatal deformity at that time, and she humanely kills the baby to stop it from suffering. But shortly after this, the witch finder arrives looking for trouble, and won’t stop looking until he finds it.

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I haven’t read any books like this one before - it is written in the 17th century regarding the hunt for witches in a small seaside village called Clearwater. The references to medicine in my book came from Sharp’s book. She listed in enormous detail the plants, which were their frontline medicines. That’s all they had. She talks so movingly about each plant and what its uses and how you combine them together to say, make the placenta come out after the birth, or to make the milk flow, or stop the milk, or treat a fever. In the end, I bought my own copy, because I never want to be without Jane Sharp. The Midwives Book by Jane Sharp, 1671, can be viewed online at the Welccome Collection. CM: I thought it was a clever tool. The poppet seemed to reveal both the ridiculousness of the witch trials – the manipulation of meaning; but also the enduring appeal of possible (and private) magic. What kind of research did you do on the history of the poppet?