By Celia Rees

This is my introduction to the protagonist in Celia Rees' story 'witch child' Mary is a teenage girl living during the seventeenth century. She tells her own story through the pages of her journal, which are discovered sewn into an old quilt that's being restored centuries after her death.

Brought up from birth by her grandmother Eliza Nuttall, Mary knows neither her mother nor her father and so has nobody to turn to when Eliza is tortured and hanged for the crime of witchcraft. Then out of the blue, a mysterious lady rescues Mary from her former neighbours and does her best to hide her and her past from the witch finders. Her savour finally places Mary with a group of puritans who are about to leave for America to join a new colony.

Life is very different for Mary with her new...