Kent, Kathleen

Ten-year-old Sarah Chapman, recovering from smallpox in 1752, becomes caught up in another life and death battle when her mother, Martha, is accused of witchcraft by her uncle who wants the plot of land on which the Chapman family is living, and the rest of the community, looking for a scapegoat for their own troubles, joins the campaign to have Martha hanged.

In 1752, Sarah Carrier Chapman writes a letter to her granddaughter revealing a secret she has buried in her heart for over half a century. After Sarah and her family arrived in Andover, they encounter a community stricken by superstition and fear due to Native-American raids and the spread of a plague. Suddenly the Puritans believe that heretics in their town are responsible and the witchcraft trials begin. Sarah's mother Martha is among those who are arrested.

After the English Civil War, Martha Allen, a domineering servant in her cousin's household in colonial Massachusetts, lives in a world where wolves appear in many guises and assassins are sent from London to avenge the death of Charles I and starts to court with Thomas Carrier, a strong man with a mysterious past who also works for the family, and begins to learn more about Thomas's past and his involvement with the war.