Another skeptic turned practicing witch novel
I think I have discovered the fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In fiction the skeptic is almost always wrong and in reality the skeptic is almost always right. In novels, movies and television the house always turns out to be haunted, the monster is real, magic works, and the aliens really are abducting people. In reality the house is just creaking, the monster is a stray dog, magic is all illusion and misdirection, and the aliens are just the delusions of fantasy prone people.
Physick Book is the story of Connie Goodwin, a young woman working on her doctorate in History at Harvard who believes she has discovered a previously undocumented victim of the Salem witch trials. Deliverance Dane was a "cunning woman" who treated the sick with herbal tinctures and other physick drawn from her recipe book passed down from mother to daughter in her family for centuries. The narrative switches back and forth between 1991 and 1691, telling the parallel stories of Connie and Deliverance. Connie starts out as a rational historian but gradually comes to accept the supernatural and to use the power of the craft.
Physick is a mix of historical fiction, urban fantasy, and feminist lit. It has some spooky bits and a dreamy handyman and several good scenes depicting how historical research was done in the days before the internet. I enjoyed the book, and I have nothing against some magical elements in an otherwise realistic story. I just wish wish writers of fiction would let the skeptic win occasionally. Thank heavens for Scooby Doo.