Booklife Review

The demons released in Brewster’s mesmerizing memoir aren’t supernatural, but the manifestations of buried tragedies and unacknowledged trauma across an American family’s history. From the burgeoning backwaters of 17th century New England to the rural exclusivity of Long Island’s Gold Coast, Brewster traces his family history back over four centuries, one that’s defined by the luxury of connections, money, and memory flowing from generation to generation. A sharp-eyed chronicler of American privilege, he focuses on the cost of accumulated wealth and stoic WASP reserve, and explores the complex nature of distant relatives as well as his nearest and dearest–and some shocking events from his own past.

This strikingly original book’s starting point is a grabber: Brewster’s childhood discovery in an attic of books owned by William Stoughton, chief judge of the infamous witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, and an early benefactor of Harvard, where author Brewster later attended law school. How had they come to be there? In the present of Witchcraft Legacy, the now-septuagenarian author sets out to solve the mysteries of history unearthed by his 10-year-old self, digging through dusty steamer trunks at the family compound in Glen Cove, New York. Jumping around the family tree branches, he reveals long-hidden secrets, debunking legends like that of his great-grandfather, who wasn’t killed in a heroic shoot-out, but left his family and was murdered over water rights.

Facing the past with tenderness and strength in brisk, intricate prose touched with grace, Brewster finds solace in the tough, resolute women who anchored their loved ones during the worst storms. He creates vivid portraits of women whose ambitions were subsumed into family life but, like his formidable paternal grandmother (who enshrined family history and prosperity in the Glen Cove mansion), redirected their intelligence and resolve. A historical memoir of the ruling class, Witchcraft Legacy reveals the foundations of stolid lives, and shows how American myth-making can obscure the hard, vital truth.

Takeaway: Filtering American history through a prosperous family’s hidden struggles, this memoir and family history reveals jolting truths.

Great for fans of: Sarah Wildman’s Paper Love, Buzzy Jackson’s Shaking the Family Tree.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: B