Customer Reviews

Elizabeth (Sunfire Book, #3)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
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Elizabeth is an orphan, who, along with her younger brother and sister, has come to a small town not far from Salem, Massachusetts, to live with her aunt and uncle. But it's 1692, and there are witch hunts in Salem. When the witch fever spreads to her own town and her best friend is accused of being a witch, Elizabeth must choose between speaking up for her friend and risking her own life, or standing by quietly and allowing her innocent friend to die. How can she choose?

Upon the death of their father, Elizabeth and her younger brother and sister go to live with their aunt and uncle in a small town that neighbors Salem, Massachusetts...during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Elizabeth's uncle turns out to be extremely strict...especially on Elizabeth's brother, and after a childish indiscretion, her uncle actually sends her brother off to be an indentured servant...in Salem. Between Elizabeth's fear for her brother, all the hard work, trying to fit in in a new town, and her confusing feelings for a young farmer, Elizabeth's life has become more complicated than she ever dreamed possible. But it's about to get more complicated. Elizabeth, on one of her long walks, happens to meet Nell, a young woman who has recently come from Barbados to live with her grandmother, and Johnny, a young man Elizabeth suspects of being the highwayman that has recently terrorized the village. Elizabeth unexpectedly finds a place to belong and true friendship with these social outcasts and begins to secretly meet with them. But then Nell is accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth knows that the charge is not true, but by speaking up, she will reveal her own deceit and perhaps implicate herself as well. And if all that were not enough, Elizabeth fears that she has fallen in love...with the highwayman!

After a string of predictable Schurfranz Sunfires, this couldn't help but be an improvement. Boy howdy, was it!

Elizabeth Fallon comes to Saugus, MA with her brother & sister in tow, the unfortunate objects of charity by her uncle, who doesn't let them forget for one minute just how grateful they should be. He's a forbidding, hardline Puritan and his more footloose kin from Boston don't sit well with him. As soon as Elizabeth and her siblings arrive in Saugus, they get a taste of the strict Puritan life with work, punishment, and eight hours of sermons on Sunday. Mark gets on Uncle's bad side from the get-go and pays for it, while Elizabeth tries to be dutiful and a cipher within the community. If I don't make waves, she thinks, I won't get into trouble. Well, trouble comes to her anyway. In her attempt to make friends, she settles on two vastly different girls: Nell Woodward, an orphaned transplant from Barbados with something of a free spirit, and Dorothy Givens, the daughter of the town minister that thunders at his flock and has the whole town cowed, like any powerful holy man worth his salt should.

Unfortunately, Dorothy is a tramp, and Elizabeth's advice to her to keep her skirts down (figuratively) goes gleefully ignored. Lie upon lie eventually come to a point where Dorothy decides to sacrifice someone else to charges of witchcraft rather than face the consequences of being condemned as harlot. Her father, naturally, would rather that happen as well than be made a laughingstock by his congregation.

The crux of the story is that of Elizabeth's conscience and courage. For most of the story, she's an utter coward - bending to the dictates of her uncle and the community. It's the Puritan code that actions by one reflect on the entire family, and should Elizabeth say anything against "respectable members," retribution and judgment will be swift. This fear is heightened by the reports coming from Salem of witches, coupled with unvoiced suspicions by level-headed folk that magic isn't at the root of it, but rather human faults like envy and greed. For a group that fled English persecution, they live in a prison of their own making, and Elizabeth's paralyzed immobility when she sees wrongdoing around her illustrates that wonderfully.

Now, the romance: it's obvious from the get-go who Elizabeth will end up with but, despite that predictable element, the romance in the book, usually so detached from the events of the story, is integrated into the plot. Elizabeth is courted by one of those respectable members, and as her crisis of conscience approaches, so does her decision about what a life with him would entail. She doesn't like what she sees. Her other suitor, a courtship more under the surface, is from one of those pesky logical types that were so persecuted by the good Puritans. Yet he, like Elizabeth, finds himself paralyzed to act on his convictions, partly because of community pressure, and partly because he has his own family agenda. Both he and Elizabeth take the long view of the consequences of speaking out, but eventually bend to their consciences.

This was one of the deeper Sunfires, more a story about what it means to be honest, true to oneself, and leading by example, than a story about a girl being batted about by hormones. I enjoyed it from first page to last and will be moving Roberts' adult HF higher up on the To Read list.

This is a great book. I had never read this one but have read other books in the series. It takes place at the time of the Salem Witch Trials, which I have always found interesting. I love the sunfire romance series because they not only have a love story but they are about a time in history. I was very pleased with the condition of the book also.