Chris Bohjalian
In late January, WD joined Chris Bohjalian in his writing office via video call to talk about his newest book, Hour of the Witch. Like many of Bohjalian’s novels, it features a misunderstood but strong female protagonist, Mary Deerfield, who has to fight her way past rumors, false accusations, injustices, and the control of inept (and insecure) men in power to try to get the life she wants. “I love my heroine,” says Bohjalian. “I love Mary Deerfield. She’s courageous. And like many of my female heroines—Serafina Bettini, Alexis Remnick, Cassie Bowden—she’s deeply human. I mean, these are powerful, powerful women and they’re human beings. They’re imperfect, but they are so damn courageous.”
Mary Deerfield is courageous. She’s a 17th-century Puritan woman married to an abusive man nearly two decades her senior whom she tries to divorce after he stabs her with a newfangled eating utensil—a fork, also called “The Devil’s Tines” because of its resemblance to the Satan’s accessory. Shortly thereafter she is accused of witchcraft when another fork is found buried by her front door. What follows is classic Chris Bohjalian—moments of deep dread, extraordinary plot twists, and characters you love to root for paired with characters you love to hate.
For nearly three decades, Bohjalian has been entertaining readers with stories that by turn are pulled right from the headlines (an airplane pilot tries to land his damaged plane on a lake Sully Sullenberger-style in The Night Strangers) or surfaced from the depths of history, shining lights on little-known or nearly forgotten events as with The Sandcastle Girls during the Armenian Genocide. In all instances, he connects those events to the inner lives and motivations of individuals, showcasing our shared humanity.
In the case of , the origin story is a little bit of both. While the setting takes readers more than 350 years into the past, the courtroom drama and historical thriller also has echoes of current events. The details of how the novel came
