THE WITCHES OF CAMBRIDGE

Two young witches come of age and power while attending a women’s college in the 1950s.

Ava Abbot didn’t think she’d ever leave her tiny town of Genesis, Maine, or the apple farm where she grew up with controlling parents, but when she gets a mysterious scholarship to attend Radcliffe College, she’s off in a heartbeat. There she meets roommate Lauren Bell, a well-off orphan who’s always been aware of her magical inheritance. The two are invited to join the Lilith Society, a secret organization for Radcliffe witches where women support and learn from each other. As the two grow, they find themselves pulled in opposite directions: Ava is drawn to Jamie Mather, youngest son of an influential family and descendant of infamous witch hunter Cotton Mather. Meanwhile, still hurt from the losses of her childhood, Lauren tries to find a way to rid herself of her heart. Against the backdrop of McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare, as well as classmates going missing, the two girls must take care of themselves and each other if they want to make it to graduation. Hoffman again draws on lore and a strong sense of place to root her tale of magic, feminism, and sisterly love. Her characters shine, not just Ava and Lauren, but side characters such as Ava’s friend Maureen, a working-class witch, and Lauren’s cautiously gay brother Lionel, a doctor, fill out the world of Cambridge and make it feel lived in. Although the prose can lean didactic at times, with some lines painfully on the nose—a witch in 1695 writes in a letter, “Women belong to us, the lawmakers had decided. Your body, our choice, they said”—the historical parallel of the Red Scare and general patriarchal society of ’50s Cambridge with the history of witches and witch trials works well. This is a book that knows what it wants to say and says it.

A welcome novel for Hoffman fans and readers of fantastical fiction.