Tooth of the Covenant
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Nathaniel Hawthorne pens a new tale to exact revenge on his ancestor, a notorious judge of the Salem witch trials
Best known for his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne was burdened by familial shame, which began with his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, the infamously unrepentant Salem witch trial judge. In this, the eighth stand-alone book in The American Novels series, we witness Hawthorne writing a tale entitled Tooth of the Covenant, in which he sends his fictional surrogate, Isaac Page, back to the year 1692 to save Bridget Bishop, the first person executed for witchcraft, and rescue the other victims from execution. But when Page puts on Hathorne’s spectacles, his worldview is transformed and he loses his resolve. As he battles his conscience, he finds that it is his own life hanging in the balance.
An ingenious and profound investigation into the very notion of universal truth and morality, Tooth of the Covenant probes storytelling’s depths to raise history’s dead and assuage the persistent ghost of guilt.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lock (American Follies) probes familial legacy, storytelling, and the tension between individuals and their eras in the cogent, metafictional eighth installment of his American Novel series. In 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne sits in his Massachusetts farmhouse blaming his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, a Salem witch trials magistrate who refused to repent his condemnations, for his own lifelong shame and melancholy. In Hawthorne's eponymous manuscript, which makes up the bulk of Lock's work, Hawthorne dispatches Isaac Page, a fictional alter ego, to foil and wreak vengeance on Hathorne and enact a consoling literary fantasy. Isaac uses a mysterious pair of John Hathorne's spectacles to travel back to 1692 Salem. There, distracted from his mission by eye pain and dreams of Satanic rites, Isaac gradually transforms from an enlightened rationalist to a cruel, intemperate puritan. Even before he impulsively dons the spectacles and sees the world precisely as his infamous forebear did, Page grows more like Hathorne than Hawthorne. The novel's somber exploration of American cruelty and religious intolerance is balanced by its nimble prose, sly wit, and engaging glimpses of a literary figure. Lock's latest ambitious look at America's history will delight fans of the series and earn new converts.
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