Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Kathleen Kent
Little, Brown
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In 1692 Martha Carrier was arrested, tried, and hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, for having committed “sundry acts of witchcraft.” Ten generations on, her Dallas-based descendant Kathleen Kent has produced The Heretic’s Daughter, a sure-footed first novel that draws from Martha’s tribulations to evoke the short-lived witch hysteria in the New England colonies. By contemporary standards, Martha was hardly public enemy number one—her alleged sorcery supposedly resulted in a lost sow, some dead livestock, and a gaggle of frightened schoolgirls—yet four of her five children were shackled and jailed to coerce testimony against their mother. She, of course, was convicted; as a final indignity, her husband, Thomas, was required to reimburse his family’s jailers for their manacles. It’s a compelling tale on its own, but the voice of surviving daughter Sarah, whose fictional memoir makes up the narrative, is what sells the story. Her reminiscences transport us to distant times (“The [inn] was like a small cavern, smogged and musty . . . Men sat about the few tables, eating their noonday meal”), and not always pleasantly: Her depiction of the squalid jail will make your skin crawl. The Heretic’s Daughter is haunting; unlike in seventeenth-century Salem, there is real magic at work here. Little, Brown, $24.99
Bob Schieffer
Putnam
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Longtime followers of Bob Schieffer, the chief Washington correspondent for CBS, will hear his silky rasp echo in their heads as they thumb through Bob Schieffer’s America, a compilation of 171 commentaries from his Sunday Face the Nation broadcasts. Always the plainspoken Texan, the veteran newsman weighs in, ever so succinctly, on a variety of topics and events, from his one-question interview with Richard Nixon (asked if he was planning to hire outside people or in-house advisers, the president answered, “These will be outhouse advisers”) to an Alabama supreme court judge’s placement of a Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse (Schieffer imagines the public reaction had it been a tribute to Muhammad, given that “there are more Muslims in America than Episcopalians”). Schieffer is no libertarian, but he is determinedly independent, and his defense of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon is as sincere as his plea for reasonable gun control. The result is a fitting companion work to his 2003 career memoir, This Just In, and 2004’s Face the Nation, a collection of stories from the show. TV constraints dictated the brevity of these pieces, but Schieffer thrives in the short form, displaying the rare ability to speak his mind and then move on. We could use more of that. Putnam, $24.95
Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld
Photograph by Ryan Kurtz
The New York Times named the author’s first novel, Prep, one of 2005’s ten best books; its successor, The Man of My Dreams, was a national best-seller. Her newest, American Wife, draws inspiration from the life of Laura Bush, though the author asserts that Wisconsinite Alice Blackwell is not a doppel gänger for the first lady. Readers may draw their own conclusions.
How closely did you hew to Laura’s life?
I tried to explore what life could be like for someone with a moderate resemblance to her. I chose several large events in Mrs. Bush’s life to build around—the tragic car accident when she was seventeen, her twelve-week courtship with George, his struggles with alcohol, his being a wartime president—and made up just about everything else.
How long did it take to write?
Two years of working longer hours than I ever plan to work again. My earlier books took longer, but I was also freelancing and teaching, not writing full-time. But it’s fun to feel really engaged in a project.
What can you tell us about your next book?
1) My husband and my editor think it sounds weird. 2) I haven’t written a word of it yet. And 3) It doesn’t have anything to do with anyone famous. Random House, $26 (Read the full interview.)
American Wife, published by Random House.
