In 1630, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governor Winthrop led a small group of Puritan men and women from Old England to New England. After the war and the plague, they finally gained a firm foothold here. However, people's ignorance, lack of security in the new world, and religious dictatorship led them to blame witchcraft for all their problems. Even if the weather is abnormal, the crops are reduced, the livestock die suddenly, the neighbors quarrel, etc., they can use the words in the "Bible" that "a woman who practices sorcery cannot be allowed to live", accusing an innocent woman as a "witch" who practiced sorcery. They were either beheaded in public, or burned at the stake. Because of her opposition to this tyranny, Martha of Salem was imprisoned, tortured, and died. This is the famous "Sailun Village Witch Trial Case" in history.
However, 300 years after Martha's death, Katherine, her tenth descendant, learned of her story from her grandmother at the age of eight, and the urge to write her story into a book was sprouted. In order to write this story, Katherine went deep into the field, learned about her life, and delved into the materials of the witch trials in the village of Salem. It was not until she was over half a hundred years old that she put this story into writing, and after five years, she wrote her debut novel "The Daughter of the Heathen".
This autobiography, woven with the blood and tears of his family, is not only a family legend, but also a miniature history of New England immigrants. In the place where Martha lived, Catherine realized the intersection of the material world and the spiritual world, the realization of man and god, man and other creatures, man and nature, man and destiny, man and various knowable and unknowable forces. communication. Because she is a later person, when she understands the life of her ancestors and faces the setbacks, sins and sufferings of life, she is more able to examine and question with an objective attitude. When thinking about and revealing human suffering, it is more calm and powerful, going straight to the depths of the soul. It conveys to us not only her love for her family, but also her respect for the victims. She was deeply impressed by the spirit of their willingness to die with the truth than to live with a lie. Through her precise description, we seem to be in it, and with the twists and turns of the plot, it achieves a beautiful balance between historical fact and fiction.
In the book, Catherine unfolds from the perspective of her ancestor Martha's ten-year-old daughter Sarah, and completes the narrative of the entire story through the eyes of the little girl. In Sarah's eyes, life is composed of endless poverty, the struggle with terrible natural and man-made disasters, and the hard work of spring and autumn harvest. At the beginning of the story, there is a strong sense of resentment growing, Sarah does not understand her mother. Not only because she would scrape Sarah's thighs and buttocks with an iron spoon, stare at Sarah fiercely, and insist on sending Sarah away, but also because Sarah couldn't get love and tenderness by her side, so she was full of resentment.
But later, the mother and daughter achieved a reconciliation through a profound conversation. Their hearts gradually approached each other and warmed each other. But at this moment, fate seemed to be joking with them, her most beloved mother was arrested and imprisoned as a witch, and is about to face the most brutal trial. She didn't understand what the good mother had done wrong. What was even more unexpected was that those familiar relatives and neighbors suddenly became extremely unfamiliar. They and some unacquainted people used the name of God, under the imprisonment and torture of those in power, through reasonable judicial procedures. The accusation of the mother's "crime" seems to be an accomplice. The loss of reason makes them into tools of cruelty and tyranny. Human kindness and compassion are thrown into the fire of fanaticism, and the ugliness of human nature is unobstructed. In fact, they were all victims, harmed by the social environment, ideas and public opinion at that time without knowing it. The kind of freedom that is exchanged for mutual criticism and false accusations seems so cheap and helpless. This is really a tragedy of the times. Those who survived, however, lived for a long time in black wounds that would never heal. This book is restrained and reserved, and writing about those hurts seems to be an understatement, and it is calm, but in fact it is turbulent and undercurrent.
After going through so many things, Sarah finally understood her mother's pains. The fear of death did not make the mother give up her faith. In order to defend her innocence, her mother was rebellious in front of the judge, and this kind of character that would rather be jaded brought her to the end of her life.
But her mother's admonitions remained in her heart: "You can tell me anything you want from me, no matter how much anger you have accumulated against me or the world, you can tell me": "People You can't look at appearances too often, even those you love, you have to look close"; "Life is not what you have or can have, but what you can afford to lose"...
In the last moments of Martha's life, she said, "Don't remember death. Remember me, Sarah. Remember me, and a part of me will always be with you." She was hanged at the end, and the weather that day was impeccable Clouds, as if God also opened his eyes to watch...
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