January Selection: We will meet January 18th 3:45PM

I Walk in Dread

The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials,

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691

by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

In 1691 in Salem Village. Twelve year-old Deliverance (Liv) Trembley and her seventeen-year-old sister Remembrance (Mem) have come to live with their uncle after the death of their parents. Soon after their arrival, their uncle goes off to seek his fortune, leaving the girls to run the farm with the strict instructions

that they are to tell no one of his absence. The girls busy themselves tending the animals and trading eggs and apples. Liv writes in her diary, “We are well able to take care of ourselves; that is not the problem.  The problem is the villagers, who would not approve, and might condemn our uncle, and remove us from his care.” Liv and Mem are able to hide the fact that they are alone, though Liv worries that they might be punished for lying. She also is concerned that they might be

cursed by offering shelter and food to a homeless woman, Sarah Goode, who is rumored to be a witch.

When Mem becomes ill, many villagers come to the house bringing food and home remedies. When a small child asks of Mem, “When is she going to scream blasphemies?”  both girls are shocked. They soon learn that the visitors believe Mem is afflicted, like two girls in the village who are “contorting their bodies

into unnatural positions and uttering terrible sounds that mostly make no sense.” Liv, who has already worried over the cause of Mem’s illness, feels a “sense of doom.” She writes, “Something terrible is going to happen in Salem Village. I can feel it in my bones, as surely as the caterpillar can feel a long winter coming.”

Mem recovers, but the girls in the village do not. When the doctor is unable to find a physical cause for their affliction, he says “the Evil Hand” is on them. The villagers, looking for someone to blame, accuse Sarah Goode and two others of being witches and doing the Devil’s work. The women are arrested and brought before a public examination. Even though they declare their innocence, the majority of the villagers do not believe them. Soon, more girls become afflicted, and more people are accused, including Martha Corey, an intelligent and outspoken woman.  Liv wonders, “Why does the crowd still choose to hear the voices of the

girls instead of the voice of reason?”

Meanwhile, the landlord threatens to evict Liv and Mem if they cannot pay the rent on the farm. Since it appears that their uncle might never return, Liv writes of the trouble to their older brother Benjamin, who returns to be with them. Mem, who is being courted by Darcy Cooper from Haver’il, accepts his marriage

proposal. The whole family plans to move. Liv joyously writes, “Darcy will arrive in the morning with the big wagon, and we will load it up and

be gone from this place, not a moment too soon. Thank you, God. Thank you!”