Spellbook Saturday: The Ruin of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill

Header for 'Spellbook Saturday' featuring the title 'The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World' by Malcolm Gaskill, with 'Hedge Witch Farms' and established date '2025' below.

This week’s #spellbooksaturday is non-fiction that reads like a gripping true-crime novel…

The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcom Gaskill
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
[Content warnings: Death of a child, religious trauma, etc.]

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.
[source: bookshop.org]

Gaskill’s writing is well-paced, building tension through the blending of a historical chronology with the author’s analysis, giving a propulsive quality to the narrative—one sees the accusations of witchcraft as almost inevitable, given the social, political, and religious circumstances of the time. I appreciated the incredibly rigorous research, which gives a holistic impression of a community teetering on the precipice of witch hysteria.

Have you read The Ruin of All Witches? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!

Black and white illustration of a decorative leafy branch with elongated leaves.

I have a Bookshop.org list of #spellbooksaturday features for folks to peruse, but in the spirit of transparency, as a Bookshop.org affiliate, I receive a small percentage of book sales purchased through my links. If you find that off-putting, feel free to shop directly through bookshop.org or your own local bookseller! My only goal here is to resist Amazon and the mega-rich.