Sarah's Reviews > The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony, 1687

As the granddaughter of a wealthy plantation owner, Katherine “Kit” Tyler was considered a person of importance in her childhood home on Barbados. Now that Grandfather is dead, Kit has pleaded with her Aunt Rachel in Connecticut to take her in.

Aunt Rachel gladly opens her home to Kit, but Rachel’s husband, Puritan elder Matthew Wood, is less enthused. Kit is very much a part of the mainstream Anglican culture of the day—she’s a fan of playacting and colorful clothing. Matthew is worried that his niece will be a bad influence on his teenage daughters, and that she might draw negative attention to his household.

Matthew’s fears of public disapproval are not entirely baseless. Wethersfield is peopled with paranoid gossips. Like all New England residents in the seventeenth century, they must constantly strive against the elements for survival and have almost no leisure time. But as Puritans particularly, they have left themselves almost no amusements save fomenting mistrust of any neighbor who’s even a bit unusual.

Kit is sheltered and spoiled, but naturally kind and brave. She tries admirably to adapt to her new home. But on a particularly trying day, she meets elderly Hannah Tupper, a Quaker widow cast out of the community. Hannah’s house becomes a hideout for local misfits, including Kit, abused little Prudence Cruff, and handsome Nat Eaton from the neighboring settlement.

A foul wind is starting to blow through New England…

Content Advisory
Violence: Hanging mentioned (view spoiler)[but doesn’t happen (hide spoiler)].

Sex: Nothing.

Language: Nothing.

Substance Abuse: Nothing.

Nightmare Fuel: Nothing.

Politics & Religion: Kit has an alarmingly cavalier attitude about the African slave trade, which surfaces once or twice. Nat disagrees with her rather vehemently on the subject, and it’s implied that he may be able to change her mind in the future.

The people of Wethersfield have ostracized Hannah because she’s a Quaker. She is not a witch in any sense of the word, and nor is anyone else in the book. At Kit’s trial, common accusations against alleged witches are tossed about, including that she was seen conversing with the Devil.

Conclusions
The Witch of Blackbird Pond has been a favorite of mine since I was about eleven.

While often used in social studies classes to reinforce lessons on the Salem Witch Trials, the book itself is set in a different colony, a few years before the Salem hysteria began, and its accusers are not that notorious group of girls. It’s a precursor to those events, but on a smaller scale, and luckily ends with Hannah, Nat, Kit and Prudence all alive and well. But while the sword does not fall on the main characters, Speare does a fine job establishing a tension in the novel’s atmosphere that lingers even after they’re vindicated. These individuals were spared, but others will not be so lucky.

There’s also a lot of subtle foreshadowing of the American Revolution in the dialogue of Uncle Matthew and some of the other town council members. They bristle against the high-handed behavior of the King toward the colonists, and they predict that this discontent will eventually turn bloody, although they are not sure they’ll be alive to see it happen. The event they foresaw finally arrived ninety years later, and while they were long-dead, one can imagine that their descendants were at the head of it. You can tell that Speare took great pride in her fiery New England ancestors.

A big part of this book’s enduring appeal is how relatable its heroine is. Poor Kit. She’s impulsive and rather spoiled, but always means well, and strives not to make waves except when she needs to. She is misunderstood by most and reviled by many. The only people who understand her are an elderly person, a child, and an attractive male peer who doesn’t fit neatly in the Puritan youth box either. Kit learns that the quantity of friends one has means nothing, but the quality of those friends means everything.

Speare is also quite adept at conveying a lot of interpersonal drama with a large cast, in a comparatively short book, without making it seem crammed. Like The Bronze Bow, there’s a lot of young characters here struggling to balance their ideals with families and courtships. It adds a great deal of human interest to the story without ever tipping over into soap opera territory. I cared about how the little dance between Kit and Nat, Judith and William, and Mercy and John would resolve itself—because they were all likeable enough, they all had lives outside of their romantic travails, and the book’s main focus was elsewhere.

I wish more authors these days remembered how to do this…I love a good romance, but it seems like every book these days forgets its real object as it ruminates upon the raging hormones of its characters. Who cares about saving the world when we have love triangles to solve? It’s like the authors are writing their own fanfiction. The attitude of Blackbird Pond, among other YA offerings from this earlier era (The Sherwood Ring, The Perilous Gard, The Bronze Bow, Johnny Tremain, etc.) was that your relationship angst would take care of itself if you prioritized it behind more pressing matters, such as defending the defenseless and protecting one’s homeland.

This book has moments of bleakness and dread, balanced with cozy hearthside family scenes that still acknowledge the darkness outside. It saturates you in the world of the characters, riddled with ignorance and fear but shot through with hope, courage, and the serenity that comes from doing the right thing. Worth reading no matter your age.