In this “ bewitching” (The New York Times Book Review) novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, … bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.
When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.
Magic Lessons is a “heartbreaking and heart-healing” (BookPage) celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.
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I started the Practical Magic series with this book, the author’s latest to date, because I wanted to read in chronological order instead of published order. This was my first Alice Hoffman book. I’ve been a fan of the Practical Magic movie since it came out in the 90’s but somehow never read the books. I was missing out because this book was so magical and amazing!!
Set during the witch trial craziness in the late 1600’s, the book starts in England with an abandoned baby Maria. A black crow becomes her familiar and a known “witch”, Hannah, in the woods finds her and raises her. Hannah raises her to know how to cure maladies and do a little magic and all seems fine until Maria’s biological mother comes back to see how she’s been growing when she’s about ten and screws everything up. I won’t spoil too much in here but it results in Maria on a ship to the Dutch island of Curaçao by herself. It’s there in servitude she meets John Hawthorne. If you know anything about American witch history your heart just gave a little twinge for Maria because you know his name means trouble for witches. They have a baby out of wedlock and she is left all alone. Eventually, she decides to go find this John Hawthorne and see what has taken him so long to return to her. On her boat ride across the ocean to America she meets Samuel Dias and they connect while she tries to save his life with her magic. The two part ways but are never far from each other’s minds. In Salem, Massachusettes she finds he is married with a child of his own and wants nothing to do with her. He goes to great lengths to keep her out of the way. The rest of the book covers Faith, Maria’s daughter as she grows up and loses her mother to the witch trials and the hardships she goes through that threaten to turn her into a dark witch.
I loved this book so much because it was well researched and romantic bit of American witch history with the fictional story of Maria woven throughout it. I loved that the author inserted an alternative history for a known historical figure from the Salem witch trials, making the story all that much more real and plausible. The author acknowledges that the witch trial craze was bogus and such a tragedy because so many of those men and women, if not all, were murdered in cold blood under false accusations of being witches. Don’t like you neighbor? Accuse them of being a witch. Merchant at the market charge you too much? Accuse them of being a witch. It sounds ridiculous but that’s really how it was back then and how so many innocent people came to the gallows.
I love Alice Hoffman’s writing style. It’s simple and short in descriptions, not droning on and on but it was still just enough to put me into the 1600s and let my imagination go wild. I loved her characters in this story. They were believable and they made me feel for them and their struggles. The bad guys were bad in their actions, but they weren’t unbelievable in what they did or how evil they were. They were simply misguided men who were looking out for themselves above all others, and that’s always pretty darn believable.
I highly recommend this book. It made me want to read everything Alice Hoffman has written! I’m going to be starting “The Rules of Magic” right now!
In this lovely new book from Hoffman we learn where the Owens bloodline started and how the curse that surrounds them came about. Hannah Owens has lived alone in the woods for most of her life when one day she discovers an abandoned baby in a field close to her home. She soon sees that the child, Maria, is special and hopes to be able to teach her all that she knows. Maria grows up learning the goodness of the “Unnamed Arts” and that you should always love someone who will love you back. As a young girl Maria finds out that love can be fickle. She thought she had found the love of a good man only to be abandoned by him, left pregnant and alone. Life has a way of knocking you down sometimes making it hard to see past your own pains and hurts. Maria soon gives up on love and utters a curse that will haunt her bloodline forever. Follow along as Maria struggles to be the best person she can, teaching her own daughter the goodness of the ‘Unnamed Arts”. Beautifully written this book will enchant you from beginning to end, I surely couldn’t put it down and didn’t until the end. A truly spellbinding read that teaches you to look at each lesson life puts before you and that rushing to judgment can change your life in unexpected ways. I laughed, cried, and even prayed that all would turn out well for the characters in th end, it was an emotional journey but it was one I was happy I took.
I want more. I love the witches of the Practical Magic group. I would like more novels about them. I enjoyed this one, but only because of the connection to the Owens witches. I hate stories about women being chattel back before we were finally given our God given rights by men. I enjoy Alice Hoffman.
love Hoffman’s books
Not interesting
This is the prequel to Practical Magic and it begins almost 400 years ago with Maria Owens – the beginning of the Owens family blood line. She was abandoned as a baby and Hannah Owens finds her and raises her as her own. Hannah realizes that Maria is a witch – just like she is – and begins teaching her everything she knows.
Maria grows, and falls for a man who abandons her. Maria decides to find him and follows him all the way to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she raises her own daughter, Faith, and invokes a curse that will follow her family for centuries.
This was a pretty good book. I picked this one for my Book of the Month box and wasn’t disappointed. Thought it was a good pick for the month of October. We live very close to Salem, Massachusetts, and have visited a few times, so it was another reason I picked this one. I have not read Practical Magic or The Rules of Magic year, but decided to start with this one (since this is the first in the series, even though it is the last she has written).
The story of Maria, and Hannah and Faith is a good one. One daughter after the other – practicing the namless art – saving people, finding love, and figuring out who they are in a world where witches are hanged for their practices. Maria spends her life trying to protect Faith and figuring out if she is worthy of love.
Check it out. I am anxious to see where the story g
About every ten years I break out some of my favorite authors’ works and re-read them. Magic Lessons is a recently released prequel to the Practical Magic books, and an excellent introduction to the Owens woman in these old favorites of mine, Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic. If you haven’t read them yet, wait until you have finished this one. If you have, after finishing Magic Lessons read them again. My focus changed when I began re-reading Practical Magic. I found that very interesting.
We find ourselves in Essex County, England beginning in 1664 when abandoned baby Maria is found wrapped snugly in a basket of reeds with a crow perched on the handle, by Hannah Owens. There is nothing ‘normal’ about Maria but Hannah joyfully raises the girl as if she were her own child. Maria has powers that are growing as she does, abilities that can only be attributed to the Unnamed Arts. Fortunately, Hannah is also a bloodline witch who enjoys teaching Maria all that she will need to know to use her powers for good.
In 1674 Hannah is killed by witch hunters, and after spending some time with her just discovered natural parents, Maria and her familiar, the crow named Caden, are sent to the West Indies, to a Dutch island called Curacao, where she finds that her father has sold her – she will be an indentured servant to the Jansen family for five years. Her luck does get better for a time, and she manages to remain positive and perhaps happy. At 16 she acquires her freedom from the Jansen family, is abandoned by her first love, births a daughter, Faith, and eventually finds her way carrying Faith and Caden, to Salem and NYC where she finds herself and her roll in life. A good book. Lots of herbal advice throughout, and a story that is hard to put down.
I received a free ARC of this excellent novel from Netgalley, Alice Hoffman, and Simon &
Schuster. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Alice Hoffman is an author with whom you can never go wrong.
Read my full review on booktrib! https://booktrib.com/2020/10/06/hoffmans-latest-magic-prequel-full-of-1600s-lore-and-modern-relevance/
I was absolutely elated that I was given the opportunity to read and review this book. There is definitely credence to the hype surrounding this book.
Hannah Owens lived in a small glade, Devotion Field, in Essex County England. In January of 1664, she found an abandoned baby and took her in – Maria. Here they form a bond of mother and daughter and taught her the ways of the Nameless Art.
Once she was old enough to have a book of her own (Grimoire), Hannah had told her the rules of magic:
“Do as you will, but harm no one.
What you will give will be returned to you threefold.”
By the summer of 1674, Maria’s birth mother came to Hannah for help; a love potion that needed undoing. But Hannah’s help came at a price that cost Hannah. Fleeing with her mother, Maria ends up on a ship and sent to Curacao to work off her price of passage. Here she meets John Hawthorne, who will change her fate in more ways than one.
“… she knew early on that love would either be a blessing or a curse.”
I loved the journey Maria traversed. The ups and the downs. How the family curse for loving an Owen’s woman came to be and how taking a dark path can lead to consequences. And how sometimes, pushing things/people away will not stop the outcome. You should definitely give this a read.
This book was hard for me to write a review for. Not the rating because every time I needed to put the book down I couldn’t wait to get back to it. That alone makes it a solid four star in my opinion.
What made it hard is to write a review without it been a synopsis of the story, for that you can just read what the publisher wrote.
First this is fiction while making some use of historical events such as the Witch trials in Salem Massachusetts. The story differentiates between two kinds of witches. First we have the ones that are considered witches because they use their knowledge of nature (plants, weather, insects etc…) for healing of various ailments or conditions. Second we have the real witches that are born witches through their bloodline.
We see a mother in despair abandon her newborn girl in the hope she will be taking care of by Hannah Owens. We see how love spells can backfire. There is good and bad magic. Bad magic will always take a toll on whoever practices it.
We see how greed and jalousie can make almost any person evil. How been overly religious can bring somebody to do the most horrible deed in the name of serving their God.
The selfishness of some men in a patriarchal world who doesn’t have much regards for the woman in their lives. The suffering of the woman in these situations and looking for help in whatever manner they can.
We even learn that a Grimoire full of bad dangerous magic could be used for good if it was in the right hands so nothing ends up been just black and white.
This is not usual type of reading but I loved the story.
(4.5/5) The first half of this book was a bit slow for me but after that, it really picked for me and had me spellbound. Alice Hoffman’s writing and storytelling is beautiful and breathtaking. This is a prequel to Practical Magic and tells the story of Maria Owens, abandoned at birth and found by Hannah Owens who raises Maria as her own. This story takes us from London to Curacao to Salem, Massachusetts, the place that Maria makes her home with her own daughter, Faith. What an amazing and, at times, heartbreaking journey. I loved Maria Owens. Such a strong and independent woman who helped many women but was afraid to fall in love. While I have read and loved a few of Alice Hoffman’s books, I must confess that I have not read Practical Magical (I have seen the movie) or The Rules of Magic but those two books are sitting on my bookshelf ready to be read. I’m actually glad that I read this one first as now I can continue reading the stories of the Owens women and know where their family history began. Magic Lessons is truly a magical read!
Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the review copy.
The prequel to Practical Magic, Magic Lessons, begins in 1664 in Essex, England. It is the story of the first Owens witch who cursed all the Owens women’s loves.
The teenage witch Maria tragically loses her mentor and adopted mother. Her biological parents send her to the New World as an indentured servant. On St. Kitts, she honed her craft as a healer. Maria falls in love with the New England merchant John Hathorne, who abandons her without knowing she is pregnant. Maria travels to New England to find John.
She finds passage in exchange for nursing and healing the pirate Samuel Dias, whose Jewish family had fled Portugal. He falls in love with Maria.
Her troubles increase when she does find John. Her very life is threatened by the witch hunters of Salem, her daughter stolen from her.
John Hathorne in the novel is based on the actual magistrate who condemned women accused of being witches to death. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, our great early novelist, added that ‘w’ to his name to disassociate himself with his ancestor.)
Oh! the ways women have been controlled and punished for overstepping the narrow lives men ordained for them. If a woman reads, she must be a witch. If a woman stands up for herself, she must be punished. If a man is attracted to a woman, she has bewitched him and is evil. Bind them in iron and drown them! Nail their feet to the ground and burn them!
And women are still fighting this battle.
Maria understood that a woman with her own beliefs who refuses to bow to those she believes to be wrong can be considered dangerous.~from Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
The heart of the novel is, of course, love. How women love the wrong men and suffer for it. “Love someone who will love you back,” Hannah advises. But how do we know love when we find it? Young people confuse lust with love, always have. We ignore the signs that later seem obvious. Maria rejects her true love, first because of her passion for John, and later because she vows never to love again.
Love was risky, for marriage required women to abdicate all self-determination and choice. Maria’s magic helps women from men who abuse them.
I had a neighbor who said, “What goes around, comes around.” Hoffman’s rule of magic is similar: you get back threefold whatever you do. Best to do good! What magic you bring into the world becomes your responsibility.
Hoffman weaves her stories with flawed characters whose struggles we recognize, for even if they have magic at their command, they are very human. It is no wonder these books are so popular with readers. They offer romance, challenges, strong female characters, life lessons, and in this book a heavy dose of history.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Alice Hoffman has written a historical novel exploring the role of women in society and the price they paid for helping to heal their neighbors using plant-based medicine. It is also the story of the Owens women (best remembered in Hoffman’s book “Practical Magic” and the film based on that book).
We are introduced to Maria when her mother abandons her when she was newly born in a field near Hannah Owens’ cabin in the woods. Hannah brings Maria up as her own child and teaches her the arts of healing and making potions. Maria’s birth mother enters her life when she is eleven and brings death and destruction to Hannah. After learning what her birth mother has to offer her in the magic arts, her birth parents book a passage her for on board a ship bound for Dutch Curacao and her birth father sells Maria to the ship’s captain. Thus begins a journey that brings Maria to America and Salem, Massachusetts.
This such a well-written book that the reader will find herself thoroughly immersed in the 1600s. This is not a comfortable historical novel with a little romance. Rather, this book is sometimes hard to read as we learn what magistrates (always white men) did to women accused of witchcraft (such as, nailing iron shoes to the accused’s feet to ensure she’ll sink to the bottom of a body of water thus proving she’s a witch).
Maria is an alluring character who learns the lessons Hannah teaches her and takes to heart that she needs to keep her true talents secret. There is, however, one of Hannah’s lessons Maria chooses to ignore regarding loving men. This explains how Maria ends up in Salem and how the women in “Practical Magic” deal with love.
If you love historical novels featuring a strong woman with a complex plot and compelling characters with writing that will have you highlighting sentences, then this book is for you. You need not be a fan of “Practical Magic” nor, for that matter, even have read the book or seen the film to be thoroughly engrossed in this book.
My thanks to Simon & Schuster for an eARC.
Magic Lessons is a sweeping epic that covers three continents and three generations of a family of witches. Packed full of interesting tidbits of the wisdom of “wise women”, it’s a story about the hardships that befall women, the pain and the magic of love and the coming of age of two women.
I love Hoffman’s sensitive treatment of her witches and her sympathetic portrayal of the women and the horrors of the witch trials in both Massachusetts and in England.
Covering Maria’s life in the 17th century, the story brings to life the history and culture of the time in vivid colours and whether it’s history wrapped in fiction or fiction rooted in the history of a turbulent time, if you’re a fan of American historical fiction, this is a story you have to read.
Alice Hoffman’s way with words and rich descriptions pull you right into the story – sights and feels. The tightly woven saga following the Owens family over decades never got old or redundant. A new revelation at every turn. I enjoyed this even more than “Practical Magic”.
Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman is an excellent historical fiction that literally has it all: magic, family, suspense, history, love, loss, sacrifice, revenge, loyalty, and a riveting plot that keeps the reader engaged and riveted until the very end.
I have to say I am a huge fan of Ms. Hoffman, however I have not read the Practical Magic series as of yet (even though it is on my bookshelf), but I knew that I wanted to start with this book as soon as I saw its presence. I think the reader could enjoy this book as the first in the series, or as an addition to the books if one has already read them in the past.
This book gives the reader the insight into the beginnings and the origin of the Owens family and sets up the long lineage that follows thereafter of the women that are born into a long line of family members with the gifts, burdens, and insights privy to those that have “the gift”. Just as some traits and talents with any family, some are born with the innate gift, some have specific talents that are more unique to that soul then another, some use the magic for good, and some dabble into the left-sided and darker sides of that world.
We first get to meet Hannah Owens, Maria Owens that she comes upon abandoned in a field and adopts as her own, as well as Maria’s birth mother Rebecca. We are thrust into the 1660s in Essex County, England and then travel with Maria across seas, lands, and continents in her travels after losses, trials, and obstacles occur. We see how each culture and country during this time treats its fellow humans and how it responds to all that one does not know. I loved reading about Maria’s experiences, relationships, growth in herself and her abilities and how they change as she then moves to New England and New York. It was fascinating, and heartbreaking, to see how different she, her daughter Faith, and her loved ones were treated during that time period in each of the locations. It is stunning to see how much of a difference Manhattan was at that time from Salem, Massachusetts (and the other Essex county).
I loved the integration of the herbal remedies, the superstitions, and rules of magic throughout the book. It was intertwined flawlessly with the story, the characters, their transitions, and their stories. I truly enjoyed the relationship between Maria and Cadin, Faith and Keeper, and Maria and Samuel. I loved the romance and their entwined destinies. I loved the plot, the characters, the transitions, the pace, and I truly loved the ending. I had tears in my eyes several times, but I learned so much, and it was truly a joy to read.
This is what a novel should be. I have already started reading the rest of the series. This is excellent and is easily one of the top books for me this year.
5/5 stars enthusiastically.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.