NOVEMBER 2015 ;e Costco Connection 41
By Matthew Robb
IN EARLY 2011, when Pulitzer Prize–winning
historian Stacy Schiff decided to tell the definitive
story of one of the darkest chapters in American history, few challenges gave her greater pause than putting a human face on the dozens of
terrified innocents persecuted as
witches in the wave of madness that
swept colonial Massachusetts some 320
years ago. Notably, the victims were
demonized by their own families, executed for crimes no person could possibly commit and left no diaries to shed
light on them as real people.
Compounding Schiff’s professional
challenge was a very personal struggle:
Almost every night, the celebrated
writer suffered waves of panic.
“I was in a cold sweat for four years,”
Schiff tells The Connection by telephone
from her office in midtown Manhattan. “There were
many more middle-of-the-night terrors than epiph-
anies. The terror originated with the story itself:
innocents persecuted by the wisest men of the day, in
the name of piety.”
Two thoughts kept racing through Schiff’s mind:
“How do I manage this mass of material in a timely
fashion?” and “How do I make the reader want to
turn the page?”
Fortunately, the Massachusetts native and author
of four previous books worked through her noctur-
nal angst and penned The Witches: Salem, 1692.
Signed book gıveaway
COSTCO HAS 50 copies of Stacy Schiff’s The Witches:
Salem, 1692 with signed bookplates to give away. To
enter, go to
costcoconnectionbookgiveaway.com.
NO PURCHASE, PAYMENT OR OPT-IN OF ANY KIND IS
NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THIS SWEEPSTAKES.
Purchase will not improve odds of winning. Sweepstakes is
sponsored by Hachette, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
Open to legal residents of the U.S. (except Puerto Rico) who are
age 18 or older at the time of entry. One entry per household.
Entries must be received before the December issue is
available online, which will happen around November 25, 2015.
Winners will be randomly selected and noti;ed by mail on or
before January 1, 2016. The value of the prize is $32. Void
where prohibited. Winners are responsible for all applicable
federal, state and local taxes. Odds of winning depend on the
number of eligible entries received. Employees of Costco or
Hachette Book Group and their families are not eligible.
Pennie Clark Ianniciello,
Costco book buyer
Pennie’s pick
I’VE LONG SAID that people
are in;nitely interesting. It
seems like a good catch-all for
the range of human behavior—
the good, the bad and everything in between. One of the
most fascinating examples of
human behavior, in my opinion,
is the Salem witch trials, which
are examined in depth in this
month’s book buyer’s pick,
The Witches: Salem, 1692, by
Stacy Schiff.
Schiff—known for her
prize-winning biographies,
whose subjects include Cleopatra and Vladimir Nabakov’s
wife, Vera—trains her skills on
this dark period and shines a
light on it as no one has.
It’s an exhaustive and
captivating account of what
led to young girls experiencing
;ts and convulsions one cold
Massachusetts winter and all
that happened in that behavior’s
wake. (Item #1017292, 10/27)
For more book picks,
see page 51.
How did the Salem witch trials manage to cast a
spell on Schiff? “It was less a thunderclap moment
than a slow, steady beat of impending obsession,” she
observes. “There are few incidents as compelling …
To achieve her high-definition
reconstruction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
convulsing in hysteria, Schiff spent two and a half
years “on a strict Puritan diet,” devouring thousands
of documents—from massive court records and
period sermons to witchcraft texts. Once she had
captured the devil in the details (her book features
nearly a hundred characters), the master storyteller
devoted 18 months to inking her manuscript.
Schiff wasn’t always a wordsmith. From 1986 to
1990, the Williams College graduate acquired, edited
and channeled books through the production pipe-
line at New York publisher Simon & Schuster. “It
took me a long time actually to be able to admit I
wanted to write a book myself,” she reflects. “My
husband probably gets the blame [or] credit for hav-
ing pushed me off the ledge.”
Today the mother of three divides her time
between New York City and her second home in
Edmonton, Alberta, as part of her 2,400-mile “com-
muting marriage” to her Canadian-born husband.
“Over the summers I’m in Edmonton, to which I’ve
generally retreated to finish a book,” she notes.
Shifting gears, Schiff says, “I am thrilled that
the book will be sold at Costco. We’ve been mem-
bers since 1998. The last few manuscripts con-
sist entirely of Costco content, written on
Costco legal pads with Costco mechanical
pencils. To a New Yorker in particular,
Costco is a wonderland. Most of our
apartments would fit in the cart.” C
Matthew Robb runs an executive communications service ( theceostoryteller.com) in
Washington, D.C.
Stacy Schiff
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Preternatural
talent meets
supernatural Salem
supernatural Salem
