The startling, witty, highly anticipated second novel from the
critically acclaimed author of Atmospheric Disturbances.
The story begins in 1618, in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is
spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun, and fear and suspicion are
in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of
Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch.
Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal
remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest,
Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the
laws of planetary motion. It's enough to make anyone jealous, and
Katharina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in
everyone's business.
So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls
her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy
drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son
must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of
defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and
even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and
next-door neighbor Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own
secrets.
Drawing on real historical documents but infused with the intensity of
imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which Rivka Galchen is
known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch will both provoke and
entertain. The story of how a community becomes implicated in collective
aggression and hysterical fear is a tale for our time. Galchen's bold
new novel touchingly illuminates a society and a family undone by
superstition, the state, and the mortal convulsions of history.
