The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel
Written by Kathleen Kent
Narrated by Mare Winningham
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation descendent of Martha Carrier. She is also a natural-born storyteller, and in her first novel, she paints a haunting portrait, not just of Puritan New England, but also of one family's deep and abiding love in the face of fear and persecution
Kathleen Kent
Kathleen Kent's first novel, THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER, was based on true family history. Kathleen has worked in commodity trading and for the US Department of Defence in Russia. She now lives in Dallas with her husband and son. THE TRAITOR'S WIFE is her second novel.
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Reviews for The Heretic's Daughter
322 ratings121 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This story was very interesting and I learned much more than expected.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A story told well using the facts that have been written down with little deviation combined with the authors imagination filling the chinks of every day life and human nature.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Muy buena historia, la narración es impecable y hace que conectes con los personajes.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely wonderful! Hope the author has another one in her. A truly remarkable first novel.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A very touching story covering the Salem withch hunt, one of the black spots in human history. We never learn from history and till today such inhumanity is carried out in one form or another around the world.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I had read the introduction to this book 3 or 4 times over the last year. I found myself pulled to the book, but then felt the reading of it would drag down my spirit. Finally I jumped into it. I am so glad that I did. This story tears at your heart page after page but it also shows you so vividly how strong the human spirit is. How far have we come in 400 years? Not so far I think. This is a book that will be on my mind for some time to come.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Not for the faint of heart but amazingly well done. Don't be put off by the melancholy tone of the reader, it's the content here that matters. Learning from history is to appreciate what we enjoy and take for granted today. It also gives us hope for a better world to come and a stronger self.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I think that it’s written in diary form is what intrigues me, I love books like that.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5great story. the exceptional narration adds alot to the adio.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Truly enjoyed this book well read and I knew some of the names of the people in this book from my history studies
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5loved it! The author paints a picture of the horror everyday average people faced during the Salem witch trials bringing to light the fear and mistreatment of so many innocent people due to the gossip and hysteria of the age!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5very informative. well written and descriptive of the late 1600s.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The story was great! Wry interesting and a dark part of our history. The audio version was also made great by the reader.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is the best book that I have encountered in a long time. It meets the historical fiction category but with a lot of historical fact included so that I feel that I am learning while being entertained!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great story of the witch trials from a very personal experience.
Will be listening to it again! Awesome narrator!1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful story. Well crafted and developed characters. Definitely well told and somber
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really enjoyed the story and am not sure if my problem is with the recording or the Sribd playback. at the end of each chapter a random piece is repeated and cut off. At first I thought I was missing something. it too until the third chapter to realize what was happening. it was very disconcerting.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alot of people didn't like the first half and called it slow and boring but I liked it. . I thought it was great to help know the characters well and really get a feel for the time period. This book is great, awesome story and the reader was great too.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great read; well-written. The story is interesting as it touches on the Salem witch trials. However, it is also a coming-of-age story on how children perceive their parents and how their growing up changes their feelings towards their parents. The words are magical and the reading is mesmerizing. Very worth the time spent!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thoughtful and true to life. I completely recommend this one!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well written. I felt as If I was there, while enduring the grief brought on by ignorance & mass hysteria in America's 1600 Salem, Mass.
A bit too drawn out.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Discovered many of these historical figures are my ancestors. Well done.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read some of the reviews on this narrative and cannot agree that the beginning is boring. I found myself both sadned and unbelieving by the cruelty of power hungered men. This book is as much a testament to the strengths and power to survive adversity as it is a powerful reminder of the courage and wisdoms of woman . I am once again stirred to educate and remind my daughter and myself to remember our sisters who struggled under the tyranny of men. So that we will remain steadfast in our struggle for equality of men and woman.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a story. I for one do not know so much about the Salem witch trials except that it was ludicrous and before I started to read this book I wasn't sure what it was about (I like it that way) so I discovered it during reading.
The first part was indeed slow but such beautiful woven story I understand why the author wrote it that way. The second part got me on the verge of tears, especially cause you know this really happened.
Once i finished it I immediately went to do a search on Google and found the court trials, also the one from Martha Courier, really interesting. I had planned on giving it 4 stars. well 4.5 but I will go for 5 cause if a writer can make me interested in a subject and I still think of the book once I've finished it and want to know even more she did a great job!
Update. I am re-reading this 3 years later because I discovered that she wrote a sequel.
Read it for a second time and I was crying last night. You know this has really happened and it is so unfair. Great read! - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This just wasn't my cup of tea. I thought it was well written, I just didn't like the story.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The first half of Heretic's Daughter was sloooooow. BORING. I know Kent was trying to set the scene, the environment, the period of history and it was informative. I just think it could have been cut down quite a bit. The second half pulled me in and was fascinating and as far as I could tell mostly accurate. I've never read anything about the Salem witch trials from the perspective of someone in the jail and that part was worth the book alone. Even with the ick factor of actual shit on the ground and LICE. Sick.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wow. This was really slow to start, but once it started, it was quietly unsettling. I think I have a sickness where I imagine all the male protagonists in everything I've been reading lately to be Tom Hardy-esque, but the father of Sarah (the main character in the novel) really had that silently desperate Hardyish air around him while he had to sit by and watch his wife taken away in shackles. The author is a tenth generation descendant of Martha Carrier, who was hanged as a witch, which just made it all the more real - the characters leapt off the page and it was horrific to real these accounts of real people being killed for nothing more than someone speaking against them. The Salem witch trials have always fascinated me, and this book was a peek into what it must have been like in those terrifying times. Short, easy reading, something I will read again.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read The Heretic's Daughter for my library book club. I didn't know anything about the book before picking it up to read. I read the first couple of chapters before I read the synopsis of the book. Once I read the synopsis I then did some research on the subject matter. I had heard of the Salem witch trials before but never looked more into them. The Heretic's Daughter is slow moving at first because you get back ground on the Carrier family. This was interesting but did get boring at points. I wasn't able to connect with the characters at first.This story is told from Sarah Carrier Chapman's point of view. She is the daughter of one of the accused witches, Martha Carrier. You learn about her father, her uncle, her brothers and sister and her cousin whom she grows a close relationship with.I understand there is a follow up book to this story. I don't know if I will read the next book. I will look for it and see if it will interest me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Heretic's Daughter is a fictional story that recreates the real lives of a convicted witch and her family from the years of the Salem Witch Trials. The story is told from the view point of 9 year old Sarah Carrier, who had a difficult relationship with her mother, Martha Carrier, due to her mother's emotional distance and physically abusive personality. The story begins during Sarah's childhood as the family escapes from their town due to an outbreak of smallpox, which they unfortunately carry to their new town as well. When it becomes known that Sarah's brother has contracted the disease, the family is quarantined, but Sarah and her infant sister, Hannah, are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. The time that Sarah lived with her aunt, uncle and their family is probably the happiest period in the book, as the family provides the girls with nurturance, love, play and happiness. Sadly, this period does not last for long and the girls are sent back to their family. The Carrier family had already made enemies of themselves due to the smallpox, but quarrels over their land, confrontations with the neighbors, and other unlucky events draw negative attention to the family. This occurs around the same time that a few girls start pointing fingers at various individuals as responsible for causing their fits of hysteria and bad luck. Predictably, Martha is eventually accused of being a witch and sent to trial. From here on, the book goes rapidly downhill as Sarah and her brothers are also subsequently accused. Their time in prison is described for many chapters and is desolate, disgusting, and very depressing for the reader. As one can predict, the story does not end very well and although I tried to prepare myself, I found myself sobbing towards the end. This is a well-researched novel based on the Salem Witch Trials but it was also very depressing. I'm not sure what I expected, but as another reviewer wrote, the time period of the witch trials has become somewhat romanticized. There is clearly nothing romantic about what occurred or what is in this novel. I'm giving the book 4 stars because it was well-written and the language was very lovely. It also clearly gave me a strong emotional reaction. However, I am taking away a star for leaving me, as a reader, feeling so depressed and making me not want to read on for many chapters. Read at your own risk and keep the tissues close towards the end.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very well-written piece of historical fiction, centering around the events of the Salem witch trials. It is obvious that Kent has done her research, and done it well. I'm rather surprised this novel didn't garner more attention that it has. I might rate this higher, but for the fact that the subject matter was so depressing. I have a mild fascination with the whole Salem witch trial era, but I think that period of time is often romanticized, so to speak. It really was a time of struggle, as well as ignorance, and it makes me grateful that I live in the here and now.