*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE* *A TIMES SUNDAY
TIMES AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR* 'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times
'Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC History In the frontier town of
Springfield in 1651 peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils livestock ails and
property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children
sicken and die. As tensions rise rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community
becomes tangled in a web of spite distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on
a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons the irascible
brickmaker and his troubled wife Mary. It will be their downfall. The Ruin of All Witches
tells the dark real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These
were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America when English settlers' dreams of love and
liberty of founding a 'city on a hill' gave way to paranoia and terror enmity and rage.
Drawing on uniquely rich previously neglected source material Malcolm Gaskill brings to life
a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic in curses and enchantments and
precariously balanced between life and death. Through the gripping micro-history of a family
tragedy we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural
obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see in short the birth of the modern world.
'Gaskill tells this deeply tragic story with immense empathy and compassion as well as
historical depth' The Guardian 'As compelling as a campfire story ... Gaskill brings this
sinister past vividly to life' Erica Wagner Financial Times Sunday Times bestseller
November 2022
