JULIA PARK TRACEY LIVESTREAMING ON TIKTOK FROM BOSTON, MA
Join Julia Park Tracey, author of Silence: A Novel as she livestreams from Boston Commons on October 25th at 11am EST and 1pm EST.
11am EST: Julia will be livestreaming at the Boston Commons, the site of the Hanging Tree. The elm tree came down in 1876 in a storm but had been the site of many hangings for miscreants and others in its heyday (1600s-1700s). The Common was a site for Puritanical punishments, home to a whipping post, pillory, and stocks. Pirates, murderers, and witches were hanged from the tree known as “The Great Elm.” Mary Dyer and three other Quakers were also hung on the Common for their beliefs.
1pm EST: Julia will livestream from Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, where notable preachers Cotton (and Increase) and Mather, closely associated with the Salem Witch Trials, are buried.
Witness a little piece of history from your own home with these livestreams on Julia’s TikTok page here!
This is event is part of the Retracing the Witch Trials Tour with Julia Park Tracey, Author of Silence: A Novel. The tour spans October 19 through 30, 2024 and takes place in New England. Readers are invited to enjoy the tour from afar through the TikTok Live events coordinated as part of this tour or if you live in New England, we invite you to attend the events. Learn more about the whole tour here.
About Silence:
After three grievous losses, Puritan woman Silence Marsh dares to question God aloud in the church, and that blasphemy lands her in trouble—she is silenced for a year by the powers that govern.
Broken in heart and spirit, Silence learns to mime and sign, but it isn’t until a new Boston doctor comes to her backward Cape Cod village that she begins to hope again. Rather than treating Silence with bleeding or leeches, Dr. Greenleaf prescribes fresh air, St. John’s Wort, long walks—and reading.
Silence has half a hope of getting through her year of punishment when the cry of witchcraft poisons the village. Colonial Massachusetts is still reeling from the Salem Witch Trials just 20 years before. Now, after they demanded her silence, she is called to witness at a witchcraft trial—or be accused herself.
A whiff of sulfur and witchcraft shadows this literary Puritan tale of loss and redemption, based on this bestselling historical fiction author’s own ancestor, her seventh great-grandmother.
About Julia Park Tracey:
Bestselling author Julia Park Tracey’s ancestors and their stories have given her a trail to follow from New York and New England to the Deep South and the Pacific Coast (Thanks Ancestry.com). The Bereaved; A Novel, the story of her great, great grandmother’s loss of her children to the Orphan Train was named in the top 100 indie books published in 2023 by Kirkus Reviews. Silence is the story of another “an-sister,” Silence Greenleaf.
