Will the Devil Help Me Now?

Content in their quiet lives cocooned within their cozy cottage alongside Elpseth's four-year-olddaughter and a sassy black cat, the Blackwood sisters spend their days gardening and grinding anarray of flora into tonics and salves. No, life isn't perfect. Isla hides a forbidden love andElspeth's dream of having the perfect family crumbled the moment her lover sailed away and lefther with a swollen belly, but these yearnings aren't anything a hard day's work in the soil can'tcure. The year is 1649 in Fife, Scotland, and they are renowned for their kindness and knowledge of botany.Valerian root to combat melancholia, yarrow leaves to reduce bleeding, and milk thistleto lower blood sugar, the town has relied on their natural remedies for a decade. That is, until anelderly patient dies from pneumonia and a young mother and her newborn are taken by thereaper after the doctor ignores Isla's pleas to operate and bleeds the woman instead.Three corpses, one liar, and a dozen rumors suddenly grip the small town, thrusting Fifeinto the hysteria that plagued the country for 175 years with Elspeth and Isla in its eye.Friendships sour, suspicion poisons, and violence erupts as the sisters are deemed bana-bhuidseaches. Witches.They try to plead their innocence, but their neighbors have no interest in the truth. Withthe arrival of John Kincaid, the professional witch pricker, the mania is accelerated and thetownspeople commit the most heinous act in the name of justice. Now, the sisters have nothingleft to lose and swear vengeance upon the community they dedicated their lives to healing. Ergotfungus to create hallucinations, daffodils to induce vomiting, and cherry laurel to wieldrespiratory failure. Their neighbors cry their guilt, convinced they are in league with the devil.The sisters refuse to disappoint.