Prior to 1687, Kit Tyler enjoyed a relatively carefree life marked by nice clothes, servants and sunny days along the sandy beaches of Barbados. Everything changes upon the death of her grandfather, and she soon sets upon a ship called the Dolphin for the harsh existence among the Puritans on the rocky coast of Connecticut.
It does not take long at all for Kit to realize that her voyage from Barbados to Wethersfield, Connecticut, is like traveling through the Bermuda Triangle. The daily expectations of the completion of one chore after another after another after another quickly makes her realize she never fully appreciated the kind of freedom she used to indulge in without care or thought for what it was. Such freedom is unknown among the teenage girls in Puritan society, or among Puritan girls or boys of any age, as well as Puritan men and women.
Kit’s life with her Aunt Rachel and her husband Matthew Wood takes place within a community that seems curiously joyless to the new arrival. Though she makes a great effort to accustom herself to expectations and demands, ultimately escape is the only constant on her mind. In this sense, escape is synonymous with the antithesis of Puritanical ideology: the Quakers.
The Quaker sensibility is here personified in the person of Hannah Tupper who lives in the once area of Wethersfield that brings any pleasure to Kit. The Great Meadow, in addition to be free from the savage imposition of colorless devotion that marks the village, is also home to Hannah’s isolated shack. The Puritans and the Quakers never got along very well and intermittent periods of outright persecution only worsened the situation…such as the banishment of Hannah out of the Massachusetts settlement due to her undesirable spiritual beliefs. Seeking refuge on the outskirts of Wethersfield, Hannah finds only alienation burdened by suspicion.
Hannah is, naturally, assumed to be a witch by most of the Puritans, but represents freedom and independence for Kit. Not that the two perspectives are in any way mutually exclusive; in fact, Kit comes to see that the one engenders the other when the lack of restrictions enjoyed by Hannah places her under direct suspicion for creating the mysterious fever that sweeps through the township. The witch hunt that ensues ultimately culminates with the shack in the Great Meadow being burned to the ground and Kit finding herself on trial in part for helping Hannah to avoid becoming a victim of the conflagration herself.
Kit is also suspected of witchcraft because of an earlier incident in which she saved the doll owned by a little girl named Prudence that dropped in the water by jumping in to save it from sinking. Since only witches were thought able to swim according to Puritan belief, this act of kindness became the first mark against her. She is also thought to have bewitched Prudence. At her trial, when young Prudence reveals the ability to read from the Bible, she effectively proves that rather than bewitching her in the name of Satan, Kit was teaching her to write as well as read the word of God. The testimony of Prudence succeeds in gaining Kit her freedom and she eventually marries Nat Eaton, the son of the Captain of the Dolphin and the boy who asserted that he ability to swim was evidence of witchery.
