'Vivid and enchanting, with a can’t-miss-it foray into the Salem Witch Trials, Magic Lessons is another sublime entry in an arresting series.' - Esquire 'A gorgeous new novel you won't want to miss' - Bustle Magic Lessons is a compelling reminder of the past, which as it turns out, is not distant enough from the present.” - Boston Globe 'Hoffman writes deftly, and often beautifully, about nature, and she can plot like, well, a witch, casting a spell on her reader to flip pages, reading ahead for plot twists. Hoffman’s book swept me away during a time I most needed it.' - New York Times Book Review My current reality feels chaotic and confusing to have a narrator take my hand and tell me that linden root and yarrow will cure a racing heart, that witches turn silver dull with their touch, is an undiluted pleasure. 'Storytelling is in Hoffman’s bones, and the skill with which she dispenses information and compresses time, so that a year passes in a sentence, so that a tragedy witnessed becomes the propeller for a hundred-page subplot, is (forgive me) bewitching. Magic Lessons is a “heartbreaking and heart-healing” ( BookPage) celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling. 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. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

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. Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. 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.

Alice hoffman magic lessons review