A chilling mystery based on true events, from New York Times
bestselling author Katherine Howe.
It's senior year, and St. Joan's Academy is a pressure cooker. Grades,
college applications, boys' texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and
her friends keep it together. Until the school's queen bee suddenly
falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class.
The mystery illness spreads to the school's popular clique, then more
students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing
fits. St. Joan's buzzes with rumor; rumor erupts into full-blown panic.
Everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution?
Stress? Are the girls faking? Only Colleen--who's been reading The
Crucible for extra credit--comes to realize what nobody else has:
Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered
from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .
Inspired by true events--from seventeenth-century colonial life to the
halls of a modern-day high school--Conversion casts a spell.
"[Howe] has a gift for capturing the teenage mindset that nears the
level of John Green."--USA Today
"...this creepy, gripping novel is intimately real and layered,
shedding light on the challenges teenage girls have faced throughout
history."--The New York Times****
"A chilling guessing game . . . that will leave readers thinking about
the power (and powerlessness) of young women in the past and present
alike."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
