The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

Well, it didn't happen only in Europe. In my city there is also a square entitled to Giordano Bruno, considered by everyone an heretic . When they burned him and he saw the Holy Cross he moved the face in another direction. At least it was understandable. He was condemned because of it.

We write of witches. In 1300-1600 if women considered witches  burned in Europe. And not just women.

I admit Europeans weren't as sweet as we can think with the so-called special people. People with a certain gift donated by God once born. In the past being too beauty or too ugly or born with a physical or psychological lack could mean a sentence of death.

I grew up with the terror and fascination of witches. I grew up in a countryside and Mom always said me to return home as soon as possible and before the arrival of the evening for not being captured by a witch.
Some neighbors told us that they had clearly heard witches clapping hands and smiling and laughing.

Where is the truth?

Fairies and witches and other mythical creatures are now disappeared because our heart much more devoted and cynical and too taken by electronical gadgets and a life spent in a materialistic way and we have lost our capacity for seeing also the unseeing that there is in this world?

Or, differently they didn't exist?

I do believe in fairies, angels, and I do believe in the magic of the various people of this world so yes I do believe also in the powers of some people.

Witches, wizards?

Well...

It seems that Massachusetts imported this tradition of killing potential witches in 1692 and it is what it wants to focus the book written by Brunonia Barry The Fifth Petal.

Beautiful cover, suggestive, I fell in love for this book firstly because of this impressive, sunny, relaxing, mysterious cover. The author confess maybe she is one of the descendants of the witches hanged up in this famous oak in Salem, an area and an oak still not found with certainty. If not yet dead...

The story is intriguing.

The Fifth Petal wants to remember the five women descendants of the witches killed in 1692 in the city of Salem and their fight for finding the place where their ancestors where hanged up. They would have blessed that place once and for all closing with the past this horrible story.

For sure Salem must be a city where Halloween is prolonged and where people love to indulge in esoteric for maintaining a consolidated tradition :-)

The "chief" of these new witches, the story starts in 2014 but there are frequent flashback when in 1989 the new witches found dramatically dead, starts with Rose.

Rose was an important teacher once, very intelligent and acculturated. Unfortunately what she saw the evening in which her friends were killed in the area she thought could be the one where the witches were killed in 1692 - while she was blessing in God's name the area with all the other ones close to her - devastated her mind and she hasn't never returned completely normal.

Her thoughts focused on banshee, the famous oak where the hanging process took place and now there was also this new story of this new departure of a young boy...Rose convinced she had killed the boy through the banshee.

Discovered that her beloved Rose still alive. Callie, the girl who escaped at the horror of the night of 1989, daughter of one of these so-called Goddesses re-afforded to the city of Salem for trying to discover much more. She found another Rose, devastated by illness and her own internal demons.
Callie, after what happened the night in which also her mom lost her life was grown up superbly well by some nuns. They created a good girl with a good career in music-therapy. Callie works with critical patients and her life although this trauma devastated her very positive under many aspects for sure.

According to her point of view Rose not only didn't kill this teenager but absolutely she couldn't have killed the various other descendants of the witches.

After all this new version of witches had as their main characteristic of donating themselves carnally at a lot of men of the area. There weren't powers, there weren't enchantments. There was just carnality.

But so, who could have done it?

The final is pretty shocking but after a lot of sufferance there is the good end.

A very good book if you want to discover much more about: little places, hidden secrets and false truth, and real truth kept buried somewhere per decades, witches, Salem, the power of healing, the gifts of some people, good heart of most of the protagonists, help, our beautiful city of Matera in Italia where the protagonists Paul and Callie will also afford for a brief moment of their existence. Thanks for remembering Italy! wonderfully and vividly portrayed.
My favorite characters remain the ones of Callie and Rose united from an old friendship since Callie was little and that no one, death included can ruins.

I thank First to Read for this advanced copy of the book, released at the end of January 2017.





Anna Maria Polidori