JULIA PARK TRACEY BOOK & PURITAN HISTORY TALK HOSTED BY WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Weymouth Historical Society will be hosting author Julia Park Tracey, who will present a slide show and talk about the Puritan Era and her new book, Silence: A Novel. This starred reviewed novel from Kirkus Reviews features a Puritan woman named Silence who is sentenced to a year of silence by the church elders after emoting in church following three grievous losses. In that year of not speaking, Silence emerges as a woman with a voice—however, not before she is accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Julia’s seventh great grandmother and is deeply researched through Ancestry.com. She will discuss the witch trials, the handicrafts of the era, the constraints on women, and the way women such as Silence Marsh found their voices despite those constraints.
The Weymouth Historical Society’s mission is to protect and preserve the 400 years of history of Weymouth, Massachusetts. The Society maintains and operates the Jason Holbrook Homestead. Weymouth is the second oldest town in the commonwealth.
EVENT INFORMATION
October 24th, 2024 – 7pm
Tuft’s Library, Multipurpose Room
46 Broad Street
Weymouth, MA 02188
You can purchase your copy of Silence 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.
