The Once and Future Witch Hunt

A Descendant’s Reckoning from Salem to the Present

The Once and Future Witch Hunt cover

Past and present collide in this page-turner investigation of Salem’s irrepressible question: How could this have happened? 

In 1692, Martha Allen Carrier was hanged as the “Queen of Hell.” Three hundred years later, her nine-times-great-granddaughter, Alice Markham-Cantor, set out to discover why Martha died. As she chased her ancestor through the archives, graveyards, and haunted places of New England, grappling with what we owe the past, Alice’s connection to Martha led her to a shocking truth: witch hunts didn’t end in Salem.

Extensively researched and and compulsively readable, told through alternating fiction and non-fiction chapters, The Once & Future Witch Hunt does not treat Salem as a cautionary tale. It treats Salem as an instruction manual—not on how to perform witch hunts, but how to stop them.

Praise for The Once & Future Witch Hunt

  • This fascinating, engaging debut is a scholarly and magical interweaving of two stories, two historical periods, and two women's sensibilities. Markham-Cantor brings to vivid life a sharp and independent woman, and, in detailing her own journey, sets the destructive misogyny of that time in the wider context of witch trials before and since, in the United States and elsewhere. A compelling, eye-opening, and chilling read.

    Sylvia Brownrigg, author of The Whole Staggering Mystery

  • Alice Markham-Cantor has done a remarkable thing here. From the sparest bones of an ancestor’s story, she has fashioned a thoroughly engaging work of literature that is equal parts historical fiction, personal narrative, feminist theory, and a good old-fashioned detective yarn. In The Once and Future Witch Hunt, Markham-Cantor rescues Martha Carrier from one of the darkest corners of our nation’s past. Her voice, and Markham-Cantor’s too, will linger in your memory long after you’ve turned the final page.

    Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father

  • The most vivid and accessible introduction to the world's most notorious witch trials that a newcomer is likely to find, and also a very timely warning for the present.

    Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present

  • Through lively characters and fast-paced storytelling, Markham-Cantor transports us directly into the world of the Salem witch trials. The Once and Future Witch-hunt clearly shows that there is nothing exceptional about the conditions in which witch hunts arise. Rather, we see how the urge to blame, scapegoat and other is all too typically human.

    Miranda Forsyth, director of the International Network Against Witch Hunting

  • In this fascinating and powerful look at the story of one family caught up in the Salem witch trials, Alice Markham-Cantor performs a kind of literary magic, blending fact and fiction into a form perfectly suited to the troubling subject matter and the limits of the historical record. The exact truth of what happened to her ancestor Martha Carrier will never be known, but thanks to this indelible book, readers can imagine Martha’s life and, alas, her death.

    Ann Packer, author of The Children’s Crusade

  • I could not put this book down. The author's remote ancestor becomes a real person, whose death by hanging was provoked by neighbors' claims of her witchcraft, encouraged by religious leaders. The modern cases listed show such beliefs occurring world-wide – and generating similar responses.

    Jean La Fontaine, author of Witches & Demons