Orem Library

Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric. The result is an American tragedy of stark...

Shares the story of the victims, accused witches, corrupt officials, and mass hysteria that turned a mysterious illness affecting two children in Salem Village, Massachusetts, into a witch hunt that took more than a dozen lives and ruined hundreds more.

In 1687 in Connecticut, Kit Tyler, feeling out of place in the Puritan household of her aunt, befriends Hannah Tupper, an old woman considered a witch by the community and suddenly finds herself standing trial for witchcraft.

Providing a uniquely broad translatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces Puritanism's tumultuous history from its initial attempts to reshape the Church of England to the establishment of godly republics in both England and America.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where...

The early American Congregational minister and author Cotton Mather (1663-1728), remembered mainly for his participation in the Salem witch trials, is perhaps the greatest and most misunderstood figure in pre-revolutionary American history. Mather believed his main purpose in life was to do good and he devoted his life to praying, preaching, and writing, eventually publishing more than 400 works.

Caught between the ideals of God's Law and the practical needs of the people, John Winthrop walked a line few could tread. In every aspect of our society today we see the workings of the tension between individual freedom and the demands of authority. Here is the story of the people that brought this idea to our shores: the Puritans. Edmund Morgan relates the hardships and triumphs of the Puritan movement through this vivid account of its most influential...

Hearing of his wife's adultery and illegitimate child, Chillingworth's mind snaps. He takes his revenge on his victims by drugging them and subjecting them to bizarre medical treatments.

Documents the role of Samuel Sewall in the 1692 Salem witch trials in a profile that offers insight into how he was swept up in the zeal that marked the trials and publicly apologized five years later.