East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant, has lived for more than four decades in her beloved coastal village of Cleftwater. Everyone knows Martha, but no one has ever heard her speak. The person was drawing a parallel between that thought experiment and Martha’s predicament in the book. The lever is the poppet, or at least Martha thinks it is. Because the book is ultimately about a question of agency: how much agency do women have? Martha is aware that her muteness potentially reduces her agency because she’s not able to speak to defend herself or correct assumptions. She reaches for the poppet and in doing so knows she’s taking a risk. On the surface level, she’s trying to fight a witch hunt through witchcraft. On the other hand that’s all she has. The Witching Tide is written in vivid, lyrical prose. Village life in the 1640s and the sensory details of the natural world experienced by Martha are particular strengths in this beautifully crafted novel. The horror of the witch trials is skilfully evoked. Meyer has given Martha a rich inner life, rendering this mute and flawed character convincing and complex. At the end she senses the presence of a collective of countless other women who have suffered and died. Even though she has written fiction, Margaret's story is underpinned by facts - true stories of real people. She turned to books by historian Malcolm Gaskill, Lowestoft’s Ivan Bunn, and a book on midwifery by the 17th century writer Jane Sharp. 'In the early stages of writing I would spend hours on research,' says Margaret. 'I call it composting, where you collect material to build your world. Like a magpie, I gathered information about the period to understand the ambience, the atmosphere. And it was a stinky old time, the 17th century, no flushing toilets! So I spent a fascinating couple of days researching piss alleys.'

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer - Aotearoa New Zealand The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer - Aotearoa New Zealand

Martha is a mute servant woman, who also acts as the village’s midwife. The rumors begin flying just as the witchfinder comes to Cleftwater. Soon, everything is being laid at various women’s feet - dead babies, bad winter weather, illnesses, sunken ships, dead animals. No one stops to think how such a small village could hold so many witches. Guards from other towns are brought in and the gaol runs out of space. And then, Martha is corralled into helping examine the women for marks of the devil. CM: One of the things I admired in your novel is the way you show the transference of that archetype through a group of women. In the witch trials there was this idea of contagion: the fear of the coven. But the central figure is Martha Hallybread who is an ingenious protagonist because she is literally unable to speak. How did you come to her? The powerlessness of the accused women and the hopelessness of their plights is rendered in harrowing, unsparing detail. It would be difficult to read The Witching Tide and not be emotionally affected by the monstrous injustices perpetrated on Martha and the other accused women. Meyer’s atmospheric debut novel transports readers to a community gripped by fear, paranoia and accusation, vividly conveying a hysteria that threatens to engulf all reason.” — New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice It’s impossible to picture the world without the figure of the witch. She enters our imaginations early, through children’s books, TV and film. Slippery to define but commanding in her presence, the witch has long been a fascination for storytellers. And perhaps more so now than ever. In the past few years there’s been a flourishing of witch-related conversation. Across publishing there are history books covering the witch trials across Britain, Europe and America; there is a constant slough of fiction for children and above; there’s a new BBC podcast called WITCH which explores the history of the devastatingly violent witch trials before asking what it means to be a witch today.One morning, the peaceful atmosphere is violently shattered and Martha becomes a silent witness to a witch hunt. As a trusted member of the community, she is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women. But whilst Martha wants to help her friends, she also harbours a dark secret. Martha Hallybread is a healer, specializing in midwifery. She is also mute and values her role as servant for the man she raised and his new wife. She is often called upon to assist in births but the folks in her village are a superstitious lot and it doesn’t take much to turn their minds. When a witch-finder co MM: There’s a museum in Cornwall, the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: they have lots in their collection. I looked at pictures of them too and you’re right, they’ve often connected with witches: they’re mentioned in records and in other [historic fiction] books as well. For example in The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave there’s a scene where they search the accused woman’s house, and they find little poppets, which in her case are just basically ornaments on her mantelpiece. But they’re like “You’ve got poppets, that means you’re a witch.” And that was the common situation. Through the decision of making Martha mute, there is a greater sense of depth and emotional insight into her character with her fascinating inner monologue that runs alongside the scenes she is in.

The Witching Tide | Book by Margaret Meyer | Official The Witching Tide | Book by Margaret Meyer | Official

Utterly haunting and entirely riveting; this is an unflinching account of the horrors of witch trials, told in amesmerising voice from an extraordinarily talented author. It sent shivers down my spine and brought me to tears." - Jennifer SaintOur newsletter will gently land in your inbox at random intervals, bearing tidings of comfort and joy about new I applaud Margaret Meyer for choosing to write a main protagonist whose disability serves as both a physical and metaphorical plot device. Martha’s mutism (caused by a childhood illness) takes away her physical ability to speak up for herself or for any other woman and leaves her vulnerable to both ignorant and willful misinterpretation to those who would only see what they wish to see. In tandem, her mutism also metaphorically symbolizes the ways in which all women were not listened to, how their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears, how no matter what they said their words were turned against them, and how in the end they fell silent on the noose. This aspect of the novel was both the saddest and most touching part, because no matter what Martha did, she knew there was precious little she could do to help when she had no voice. And that only made her feel guiltier.