Preview of Mercy Short Summary:

"Brand Pluck'D Out of the Burning, Being an Account of Mercy Short, who was supposed to Suffer by Bewitchment." Norma Farber uses the words written by the Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, about an actual happening in late seventeenth-century colonial Boston to weave an engrossing historical novel. Through the medium of a journal, Farber has the seventeen-year-old Mercy Short relate what happens to her during the winter months of 1692-1693.

So that he can learn more about how to best battle the devil, Mather directs Mercy to pick up the quill and write all the details of her bewitchment. Since she respects the renowned minister and thinks of him as a beloved, elder cousin who will save her, Mercy does as he has directed and makes her first entry on December 6. Between encounters with the Demons, Mercy relives, through flashbacks, the last three years of her life. She tells...