In this historical novel, New Yorker 20 Under 40 author Galchen (Atmospheric Disturbances) illustrates the precarious position of women in the early 17th century with regard to accusations of witchcraft. Set in Leonberg and Linz in the Holy Roman Empire, the novel follows Katharina Kepler and her struggles to respond to numerous fabrications and slanders. As the story progresses, interspersed with Katharina's first-person accounts, testimonies from official proceedings, and accounts from her relatives, it finally dawns on the reader that this is the mother of the famous mathematician Johannes Kepler. Among the characters is a neighbor who serves as Katharina's legal guardian because she is widowed, underscoring her lack of legal agency. The numerous false accusations based on hearsay, jealousy, and greed serve to illustrate the lack of power and basic human rights afforded to women in this troubled period. VERDICT In this compelling look at women's rights and the invented crime of witchcraft, the surprise is that the perseverance of the accused shifts the focus from victimhood to basic mortality and the challenge of dealing with death and illness before a coherent understanding of disease existed. Highly recommended for fans of history, science, and the human condition.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

A 17th-century German witch hunt--really. Katharina Kepler is an old woman when she is accused, by the wife of the town's third-rate glazier, of being a witch. She laughs at the accusation. She has three grown children and a cow named Chamomile. She has a life to live. The accusation, unfortunately, seems to stick, with townspeople emerging, as it were, from the woodwork: A young girl once felt a pain in her arm as Katharina walked by; the schoolmaster once felt a pain in his leg. What one character calls "the destructive power of rumor" gathers momentum--gradually, and then all at once. Galchen's latest book, which is by turns witty, sly, moving, and sharp, is a marvel to behold. Set in the early 1600s and based on real events--Katharina Kepler was Johannes Kepler's mother, who really was tried as a witch--the novel also speaks to our own time in its hints at the apparent malleability of truth. "If only I had understood earlier what was really true," someone says. "It can be so difficult to tell, the way people talk." Galchen's story will, by necessity, remind many readers of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, but by focusing her narrative on an old woman rather than a cast of attractive young girls, she's made her mission a far sneakier one. Then, too, Galchen's prose can sparkle and sting with wit. Katharina's neighbor thinks, "In order to avoid turning people into monsters by suspecting them of being monsters, I do my best to keep myself mostly to myself." There is so much in this novel to consider--the degree to which we make monsters of one another, the way that old age can make of femininity an apparently terrifying, otherworldly thing--but it is also, at every step along the way, an entirely delicious book. Dazzling in its humor, intelligence, and the richness of its created world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Galchen's captivating latest (after the children's adventure Rat Rule 79) follows an illiterate widow as she confronts accusations of being a witch in 1618 Germany. As soldiers and plague spread across the Holy Roman Empire at the start of the Thirty Years' War, 74-year-old Katharina Kepler's own troubles play out on a grand scale after her neighbor (whom Katharina calls "the Werewolf") accuses Katharina of poisoning her and manages to convince others that they, too, have been afflicted or targeted by Katharina's witchcraft. Katharina must fight to clear her name with the help of her three children--her youngest son, a bullheaded pewter guildsman; her daughter, a kindly pastor's wife; and her eldest son, an expert in horoscopes who works as the Imperial Mathematician--and her kindly, quiet neighbor Simon, who documents Katharina's case for posterity and risks his own reputation by serving as Katharina's guardian in court. Mesmerizing details abound, such as the torture inflicted on those accused of witchcraft, and the herbal remedies Katharina relies upon. Galchen portrays her characters as complicated and full of wit as they face down the cruelties dealt to them (a man called "the Cabbage," demanding Katharina release a curse on his sister, threatens her with a "vain sword... something a nobleman might commission and then reject at the last moment, leaving the sword maker in a bind"). This is a resounding delight. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (June)

Based loosely on the 1615 witch trial of Katharina ("Kath") Kepler, Galchen's eagerly awaited second novel, following Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), pieces together the accusations and recriminations leveled at Kath through court documents, correspondence, and witness testimony. Whipped into suspicions by Ursula "The Werewolf" Reinbold, the denizens of Leonberg and Eltingen level allegations of sorcery and witchcraft against Kath. Her son, the famous astronomer, Johannes "Hans" Kepler, away at his post in Prague as an Imperial Mathematician, must intervene. Though the story unfolds in seventeenth-century Germany, Galchen gives Kath and the rest of her characters modern speech habits in a way that retains authenticity and makes for compulsively readable prose. Each short section expands the Reformation-era world of the novel, drawing readers into the small-town drama. Likewise, enchanted creatures and enticing oddities populate the book's pages: revenants and dryads are feared to haunt the forest, while Kath dispenses poultices of wolfsbane and remedies of cowslip. The highly satisfying result is part portrait of an eccentric woman, part social drama, and part nuanced recasting of historical misogynies.