The Rowans

In Massachusetts, in the years between witchcraft delusion and Revolution, a curious, insightful Tamsin Bennett comes of age apprenticed to her Grandmother Cat, child of a healer-mystic accused of witchery.

When Tamsin is stricken one morning with unearthly visions of her Papa, that day inexplicably he is found dead. Now keeping a tavern in a harbor town, she hides in plain sight to carry on the healing work of her foremothers, protects her family from danger, and chooses her lovers with particular care.

Beverly Cooper Pierce has been an academic librarian, registered nurse in the field of holistic care, family historian, and professional writer, all braiding now into her debut novel, The Rowans. Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, she had no idea that John and Elizabeth Proctor, both convicted of witchcraft in 1692, were her seven-times great-grandparents, or that some of the oldest houses in towns along the coast held stories of her father's family. After living in Minnesota many years and bringing two sons into the next generation, she now lives and writes north of Boston on Cape Ann, where the bones of her novel are familial and real. She is at work on a sequel set in Maine.