An evocative historical tale about women healers in times of persecution and the new Carolina colony—a place raw and untamed, where survival depends on grit, courage, and sometimes a touch of magic.
Late 17th century. Men are hellbent on keeping women down and barred from medicine, yet saving lives and protecting women is what the remarkable Galene mothers and daughters have done since the dawn of time. They heal those no man can.
Naida, the last in the lineage, is destined to follow the path of her virtuous foremothers. In return for forbidden knowledge and secret powers, she pledges to surrender her life to duty, justice, and self-sacrifice. Fate, however, has another plan.
Forced to flee when her grandmother is executed for reviving a stillborn, Naida finds refuge in Charles Town, where healers don’t burn unless they commit the unthinkable. She wouldn’t have if an unexpected encounter hadn’t awakened bygone memories and her all-too-human heart…
With her life in danger, she must decide: Will the last daughter uphold her healer’s oath, or will she be the first to defy the past from dictating her future and risk losing everything...?
Is loyalty to blood more important than love?
An evocative historical tale about women healers in times of persecution and the new Carolina colony—a place raw and untamed, where survival depends on grit, courage, and sometimes a touch of magic.
Late 17th century. Men are hellbent on keeping women down and barred from medicine, yet saving lives and protecting women is what the remarkable Galene mothers and daughters have done since the dawn of time. They heal those no man can.
Naida, the last in the lineage, is destined to follow the path of her virtuous foremothers. In return for forbidden knowledge and secret powers, she pledges to surrender her life to duty, justice, and self-sacrifice. Fate, however, has another plan.
Forced to flee when her grandmother is executed for reviving a stillborn, Naida finds refuge in Charles Town, where healers don’t burn unless they commit the unthinkable. She wouldn’t have if an unexpected encounter hadn’t awakened bygone memories and her all-too-human heart…
With her life in danger, she must decide: Will the last daughter uphold her healer’s oath, or will she be the first to defy the past from dictating her future and risk losing everything...?
Is loyalty to blood more important than love?
Essex County, Massachusetts, 1693. In a small village on the Shawsheen River.
Carried by the breeze, the stench ripples around me—acrid, coppery, so thick I can taste it. You’d know it was burning flesh if you smelled it. It’s like nothing else. Even more sickening are the whiffs of sulfur conjuring memories of flames licking her hair. It’s been a while since we left the village behind, but the pyre’s memory still burns in my lungs, and the wicked gray dust slowly falling from the sky still clings to my shadow.
The smell must sting Mother, too, because she walks faster now, sucking her teeth. When the burlap bundle bangs against her muddied skirt, she pulls it up to her chest and cradles it into the hammock of her arms. A passerby would think it’s a newborn by the way she holds it. But it’s more than a life; it’s a legacy. A healer’s kit that has been passed down from mother to daughter since the beginning of time. Carefully wrapped inside it is the satchel that Grandmother inherited from her mother with its forty-four flower seeds, twenty-seven plant roots, and the century-old stories that came with them. Now, the kit belongs to Mother; one day, it will be mine.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Keep walking,” she replies, eyes fastened on the dusty path. “And watch where you step. Snapping twigs sound like gunshots when the trees are silent.”
Swallowing hard, I try to keep up, but rough pebbles find their way into my clogs, and their sharp edges poke into my feet. Heavy wooden shoes aren’t meant for migration, but they’re all I’ve got —a gift from the cobbler’s dead wife. I wish Mother would stop for a moment and let me dump out the rubble.
“There is no time to waste,” she says without a pause. Her face is whiter than the yarrow crowding along the roadside.
From the corner of my eye, I watch my mind-reading mother—the one I can never keep secrets from—shift her precious cargo onto her left hip and grasp the leather pouch fastened to her belt. Loosening the drawstrings gathered at the top, she reaches inside and hands me a smooth yellow lump.
“Chew slowly, or it will not help,” she says before clamping her mouth shut. It will be hours before I hear her voice again.
As soon as the young ginger rests on my tongue, it releases its mellow, peppery flavor, spicy, hot, and sweet at the same time. For every drop of juice that it surrenders, it carries off a smidge of my queasiness. But the image of Vesta in flames stays. Nothing could take that away.
They said she had to burn because she was a witch. At another time, they would have given her a Spanish silver for bringing a stillborn back to life. But since the witch fever came to Massachusetts and blazed through our town, it hasn’t set just pyres on fire but people’s minds, too. Some are so scorched they can’t think. Nothing they say makes sense. They claim to see things that aren’t there, hear words that aren’t spoken, feel seizures that aren’t real, and whatever they frown upon or can’t put into words becomes the work of the Devil. Even an energy that can turn something bad into something good.
Vesta wasn’t brought before the court. At least, the fourteen innocent women and five good men of Salem were given a trial, a farce, to be sure, but one nonetheless. Then they died, three days before the Harvest Moon of 1692, and just hours after the judge's gavel came down. Supposedly, they were the last people to be executed for witchcraft, but that’s a lie. In our little parish, a day’s walk from Andover along the Shawsheen River, a nod from a powerful man with jaundiced eyes is good enough to end someone’s life.
“Who allowed this charlatan inside my house? She isn’t schooled in the science of medicine!” he blasted, jabbing his finger into my grandmother’s chest.
“That’s because you won’t let women into your schools,” she hollered back. “Mother Nature is my teacher; she taught me remedies you won’t find in your precious books.”
Baring his teeth, he took a step closer and stared her down. “Answer my question, Vesta. Who sent for you?”
“Your wife. She barged into my dream and begged for help.”
“A vision? This woman hallucinates,” he snarled, swiping his arm over the villagers who were magically sprouting around us. I’ve long ago learned that the only reason people gather quickly and in great numbers is to hear bad tidings. “She’s a witch trained by Satan himself!”
My mind raced so fast it hurt. While he was on business in Andover, she had saved his babe, hadn’t she? Even if the little girl had a strange red mark like a blood stain across her misshapen face, she was alive and breathing, wasn’t she?
Glancing around, I saw eyes darting and gnarly hands scratching leathery cheeks. I knew every one of these people, and their uneasiness gave me a sliver of hope. Perhaps in that moment of mindful silence, they were remembering how much they had relied on Vesta and her healing folkways. She had answered every call, day and night, when thunder rolled and snow turned to ice. She had come with her satchel of remedies for everything under the sun, cured their sicknesses, healed their festering wounds, and eased their bellyaches. She had patiently endured stench, filth, and despair for a pittance, fresh eggs, or a whispered “Thank you.”
Still, they couldn’t help but acknowledge the man’s puckered lips and reddened face. The richest man in town’s hatred for their healer was more potent than her potions, more powerful than their gratitude. And suddenly, Vesta no longer held any worth in the eyes of those she comforted and saved.
Heads started to shake, arms were raised, fists were clenched, chins were thrust toward the heavens, and Grandmother was blamed for every misfortune that had befallen them. The fire that had destroyed the church rectory. The cow that had died while giving birth to her twins. The wife who had abandoned her husband and child for a handsome young German farmer. The parched harvest of leeks and the swarm of crop-eating locusts. And now, the revival of a disfigured and unwanted newborn daughter.
“For sure, when bad things happen to good people, it can only be a witch’s doing, right?” the blacksmith questioned. “Seems plain as day that one who heals can harm and bring death,” the rope maker’s wife declared. Besides, didn’t Sawyer the carpenter see her wandering alone into the woods at night? Hadn’t the bricklayer heard her converse with ferns? Didn’t the reverend swear he saw her being baptized by the Devil in the Shawsheen River?
And while she shivered in a rat-infested basement, the people of Essex County urgently built a pyre by the light of the Wolf Moon. Then they burned their healer, the keeper of plants, the doer of magic.
My grandmother, Vesta Galene.
The Galene women have always sacrificed love for duty, using their gifts for healing. Never have they been at greater risk than during the witch trials of 1693 and the years that followed. Naida's grandmother is condemned for her healing art and burned as a witch, so she and her mother, Zephyr, flee Massachusetts toward Charles Town, a city rumored to be safe. Naida's life must follow a particular path in order to ensure she is not the last of the Galene healers, but her heart awakens at the chance for love, leading her to fight for everything she desires.
The Healer's Daughter by Myriana Merkovic captivated me from the very first page. The challenges faced by the Galene family, and especially their bold confidence in the face of patriarchal society, were incredibly empowering to read. Naida's coming-of-age arc and her fight to claim all that she wants from life led to intense scenes and fierce displays of fortitude. Historical fiction does not often set my heart racing, but I found myself furiously reading, chasing the storyline to its end.
Written with modern language and terms, the book is accessible to readers, but sacrifices period accuracy. For example, Zephyr is referred to as "Mom" in the first-person narration, though the term "mom" was not used in English for another 150 years. Nonetheless, the prose is incredible. Filled with emotional imagery, many phrases lingered with me. Furthermore, many of the men Naida meets in Charles Town have progressive attitudes, which was refreshing to read. I will definitely be reading other novels by this author.
There is violence, though not overly gratuitous, and the romance is closed-door and non-explicit, so the book is appropriate for most audiences. I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy feminist literature, historical fiction, women's fiction, and magical realism.