Product Details
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, May 2010
eBook, 272 pages
ISBN-10: 1439108757
ISBN-13: 9781439108758
Grades: 7 and up
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
"Powers of the air, be here now. So mote it be."
Nell is a wild child. Conceived on May Morning, she is claimed by the piskies and faeries as a merrybegot, one of their own. She is the village cunning woman's granddaughter: herb gatherer and healer, spell-weaver and midwife...and, some say, a witch.
Grace is a Puritan minister's daughter: beautiful and refined, innocent and sweet-natured...to those who think they know her. But she is hiding a secret -- a secret that will bring everlasting shame to her family should it ever come to light.
A merrybegot and minister's daughter -- two girls who could not have less in common. Yet their fates collide when Grace and her younger sister, Patience, are suddenly spitting pins, struck with fits, and speaking in fevered tongues. The minister is convinced his daughters are the victims of witchcraft. And all signs point to Nell as the source of the trouble....
-- Libba Bray, author of A Great and Terrible Beauty
-- Holly Black, author of Tithe and the Spiderwick Chronicles
"Hearn creates a richly magical ambiance, straddling the line between the supernatural and the concrete realm of human passions and weaknesses."
"Dramatic and frothy...provocative."
"A well-written historical novel that reads like a mystery."