Book Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Author Katherine Howe, a candidate for PhD in American and New England Studies, shows her extensive expertise of Colonial American life in this tale of Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin and her research into the life of a colonial woman named Deliverance Dane. Connie, having completed her exams qualifying her to begin her doctoral study agrees to prepare her grandmother's house for sale, even though she is anxious to begin research on her dissertation. Her first night in her grandmother's house, while inspecting the bookshelves, Connie finds within the pages of an antique Bible, a slip of parchment on which is written the name Deliverance Dane. Intrigued, she begins her research, hoping for a dissertation topic valuable enough to please her advisor, Professor Manning Chilton.

Howe is best at interweaving the story of Connie, set in 1991, with the story of Deliverance Dane during the years leading up to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. As Connie moves further into her research, she finds connections with the woman who lived three hundred years before her. Helped by her friend and roommate Liz and a restoration expert named Sam, and hindered somewhat by her hippie, New Age mother, Connie discovers little about the life of Deliverance Dane, and much about her own family and its history. Howe's depiction of Colonial life, religious beliefs, and speech patterns are expertly written, seemingly authentic but effortless to read. The modern-day scenes and the search for the elusive "physick book" forms a compelling, if somewhat predictable plot.

The novel follows the tried-and-true bestseller's formula: an interesting premise, an intriguing mystery, a love interest, and a few plot twists. Most revelations in the plot will be easily predicted by experienced readers, and the antagonist--Professor Chilton, keen on stealing Connie's research--is thoroughly non-threatening. The professor's motivation throughout the plot, and his actions at the climax, are believable only by the most obliging reader. And yet, because The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is a cozy, fall-season bestseller, most readers are sure to be obliging.

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