This book group meets virtually on the first Wednesday of the month, from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. New members are always welcome. Copies of the title to be discussed will be available at the Circulation Desk a month prior to each meeting.
Please contact Sean Thibodeau for the Zoom meeting link or for more information.
UPCOMING MEETINGS
OCTOBER 4
The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill
A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
NOVEMBER 1
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of America by Imani Perry
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South–and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America.
PAST TITLES