Dorcas_Good

Dorcas Good Rose Earhart, Dorcas Good, The Diary of a Salem Witch (New York: Pendleton Books, 2000) Dorcas Good is a novel in diary form. The main purpose of the novel is to chronicle four-year-old Dorcas Good’s time in a Salem jail, held for witchcraft. It also follows her through early adulthood, showing some of the hardships that she faced, mainly as a result of her witchcraft accusation and the harsh treatment she received from her father. Dorcas Good was accused of witchcraft soon after her mother was accused of the same crime, in early 1692. Before she was accused, Dorcas had to endure being sexually and physically assaulted by her father. She had also spent much of her time going door to door, with her mother, begging the residents of Salem for food, or for clothing. According to the novel, the young girl was arrested at home, and her own father encouraged the town sheriff to take her into custody. Dorcas’s problems seemed to snowball at this point. She was sent to jail to await trial for witchcraft. She ended up next to her mother in jail. Her mother’s punishment for being a witch novel, salem, dorcas, witchcraft, trials, mother, jail, good, father, earhart, believe, being, accurate, about, accused, 1692, young, writing, witch, tituba, read, person, people, much, girl, after, way, trying, true, time, think, taken, story, sexually