A lifelong fascination with the Salem witch trials and how they came to happen in this country led to my easily choosing the graphic novel The Daughters of Salem to read. A brief introduction from author/illustrator Thomas Gilbert assures readers right off this is a work of fiction; that though players from the real-life events played out in colonial Massachusetts appear throughout, the author's main intention was in taking a much lesser-known figure of the village, young Abigail Hobbs, and giving her a backstory connecting her with the real-life Reverend Parris's daughter Elizabeth as a friend. Part One begins when Abigail is offered a gift from a young man in her village, and her stepmother sees it as Abigail reaching womanhood, drawing the young men now. A big no-no in this Puritan community circa 1690, so Abigail pretty much becomes a prisoner in her own home, to both school and "protect" her - until she finds ways to sneak out to gather food or wood, and begins a friendship with a male member of the native Abenaki tribe who plays music and allows her to dance and feel alive again, all as mass hysteria of demons and witchery begin to take hold in the village proper. Part One of The Daughters of Salem is darkly, depressingly illustrated to fit its time and subject matter, and cuts off at a cliffhanger, just as things get really ugly, leading you to want book two ... but overall the bleakness of story and art, along with knowing the story is more fiction than fact, left me cold and feeling oddly disconnected from any of the characters at all. Not bad, but sadly not enough for this reader to continue to Part Two. 3/5 stars
NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
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