Beth M Caruso is the award-winning author of the Connecticut Witch Trials Trilogy which dramatizes the life and fate of Alice ‘Alse’ Young, colonial America’s first witch-hanging victim and the lives of her daughter, family members, and other wrongfully accused women in the aftermath of her tragic death and subsequent witch panics in seventeenth century Connecticut and neighboring colonies.

 

Immersed in the passions and fears of the era, heroes are few but still show up to confront the enemies of the innocent.

 

The first novel in this series, One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging (2015), sets up Alice’s story and introduces readers to her family members and key players in the Connecticut witch trials.

 

The second novel, The Salty Rose: Alchemists, Witches & A Tapper in New Amsterdam (2019), is both a prequel and sequel to One of Windsor in which Alice’s family member, John Tinker, works with alchemist and Connecticut governor John Winthrop Jr. to stop the witch trials after they have exploded in Connecticut. It includes the story of an accused Dutch woman, Judith Varlett from New Amsterdam and the tavern keeper, Marie du Trieux who appeals for her rescue from the gallows in Hartford during the Hartford Witch Panic.

 

The final novel in the series, Between Good and Evil: Curse of the Windsor Witch’s Daughter (2024), is a sequel that focuses on the life of Alice Young Beamon, Alice Young’s daughter who survives despite her trauma after losing her mother and witnessing more witch accusations and killings in Connecticut and beyond.