Maritime writer finds spooky surprise in family tree

Just in time for Halloween comes a Maritime-written book with both the right, seasonal topic, and a very spooky coincidence.

Out Tuesday is The Witches Of New York, by Nova Scotia writer Ami McKay, whose previous novels include the national best-sellers The Birth House, and The Virgin Cure.

This one concerns a couple of 19th century characters who consider themselves witches, and during her book research, McKay came upon a remarkable fact from her past.

"I'm a bit of an armchair genealogist, I like to trace my family tree in the evenings," she told CBC Mainstreet's Angela Walker. "So about halfway through writing the book I discovered that I had family relations that had lived in Salem during the Salem witch trials.

"One of the women in my family tree, my eight-times great aunt, had been accused, and then tried, and then sadly, hanged at Gallows Hill, she was one of the women that was hanged for witchcraft at Salem."

That convinced McKay that she was on the right track with her latest project, and inspired her to dig deeper into the idea of witchcraft, or at least, what was called witchcraft in the past, such as what happened to her aunt.

"In so many of those cases, not only just hers, that these women hadn't done anything except perhaps speak their mind a little bit too loudly, be bolder than the rest of the women in their community, see things a little bit differently and be vocal about it," said McKay.

"I kept thinking about the characters in my book, many of them are the same way, and then I think about women's place in history, and that's how we progress, by speaking our minds. But it has come at a price for some women."

She had strengthened her resolve to finish the book and do the female characters in it justice.

Set in NYC, 1880

The Witches Of New York features two women who open a tea shop in 1880 in New York City that also sells potions and elixirs, and they declare themselves witches.

They are then joined by a young 17-year-old woman who comes from the country to work at the shop to see if magic exists in the world.

"That really appealed to me," said McKay, "that there would be these really innovative, outside-of-the-box-thinking women, that I could explore their lives."

One of the tea/potion shop owners is the main character from her previous book The Virgin Cure, Adelaide, now 10 years older.

As McKay found out, those witches were often just daring women, and The Witches Of New York looks at magic in that different light.

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