Colonial America

Anderson, Laurie Halse – Fever, 1793  
(251 pages) In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.  (N)

Blackwood, Gary – The Year of the Hangman 
(261 pages) In 1777, having been kidnapped and taken forcibly from England to the American colonies, fifteen-year-old Creighton becomes part of developments in the political unrest there that may spell defeat for the patriots and change the course of history.  (N)

Brodeur, Tom – Regina Silsby’s Secret War  
(248 pages) The daughter of a wealthy ship owner uses the superstitions of the day to divert the British forces and support the Sons of Liberty following the Boston Tea Party.  (LC)

Bruchac, Joseph – Pocahontas   
(173 pages) Told from the viewpoints of Pocahontas and John Smith, describes their lives in the context of the encounter between the Powhatan Indians and the English colonists of seventeenth-century Jamestown, Virginia. (N)

Chibarro, Julie – Redemption  
(262 pages) Chronicles the arduous journey of a twelve-year-old English girl and her mother as they flee with other religious protesters to the New World in the early 1500's, and the heartbreak and hope they find when they arrive.  (N)

Duble, Kathleen Benner – The Sacrifice  
Two sisters, aged ten and twelve, are accused of witchcraft in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1692 and await trial in a miserable prison while their mother desperately searches for some way to obtain their freedom.  (N)

Rees, Celia – Sorceress   
(342 pages) Eighteen-year-old Agnes, a Mohawk Indian who is descended from a line of shamanic healers, uses her own newly-discovered powers to uncover the story of her ancestor, a seventeenth-century New England English healer who fled charges of witchcraft to make her life with the local Indians.  (N)

Rinaldi, Ann – The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre  
(333 pages) Fourteen-year-old Rachel Marsh, an indentured servant in the Boston household of John and Abigail Adams, is caught up in the colonists' unrest that eventually escalates into the massacre of March 5, 1770.  (N)

Rinaldi, Ann – Hang a Thousand Ribbons: A Story of Phillis Wheatley  
(336 pages) A fictionalized biography of Phillis Wheatley who, brought to the United States as a slave, later finds renown for her poetry.  (N) 

Witchcraft Trials

Duble, Kathleen Benner – The Sacrifice 
(211 pages) Two sisters, aged ten and twelve, are accused of witchcraft in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1692 and await trial in a miserable prison while their mother desperately searches for some way to obtain their freedom.  (N)

Hearn, Julie – The Minister’s Daughter
(263 pages) Set in 1645 England, the arrival of a strict minister and his beautiful but cruel daughter change the lives of the local healer and her granddaughter, Nell, forever.  A rousing historical fantasy that spans in time from 1640s England to Salem in the 1690s.  (N)

Rees, Celia – Witch Child  
(261 pages) In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.  (N)

Rinaldi, Ann – A Break with Charity
(257 pages) While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.  (N)

Speare, Elizabeth George – The Witch of Blackbird Pond  
(249 pages) A young woman brought up in Barbados comes to live with her uncle in Connecticut, and finds their Puritan way of life difficult after her unconventional upbringing.  (N)

Key

(N) = Synopsis from NoveList
(K)= Synopsis written by librarian

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