JULIA PARK TRACEY BOOK TALK AT NEWTONVILLE BOOKS
Join Julia Park Tracey, author of Silence, alongside Melissa Pritchard, author of Flight of the Swan, in conversation with Jessica Keener, author of Strangers in Budapest for an evening of new historical fiction!
In one of Massachusetts’ most revered indie bookstores, historical fiction author Julia Park Tracey presents a talk about her new book Silence: A Novel which is the story of a Massachusetts Puritan woman who after the loss of her family cries out in church only to be publicly punished and sentenced to a year of silence by church leaders. Alongside Pritchard and Keener, Julia will talk about the era, the witch trials, and women of those times, information she collected in researching this story, with the help of Ancestry.com.
EVENT INFORMATION:
October 29th, 2024 – 7pm EST
Newtonville Books
10 Langley Road
Newton, MA 024059
You can purchase your copy of Silence here, or purchase the novel at the event and on Newtonville Books’ site here.
Check out more info on the 3-author event at Newtonville Books’ event 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.
