Summary
After losing her grandfather,
Katherine (Kit) Tyler has no other option but to leave her home in Barbados and shift to Wethersfield, Connecticut. She lives there with her maternal aunt, Rachel Wood and her family. She embarks this journey on a ship called
The Dolphin. Along way, she makes friends and foes. She is occasionally flirted and mocked at by the captain's son
Nathaniel (Nat) Eaton.
On a stop at the Saybrook, a little girl called
Prudence accidentally drops her doll into the water and begs her mother to retrieve it. Looking at the child's plea, Kit plunges into the water to retrieve it. On her return, she finds that
Goodwife Cruff (the child's mother) has begun to believe that Kit is a witch, because of her swimming skills. Quite contrary to her belief, the fact was Kit knew swimming because she had lived on an island. Despite a rough start, she manages to make a new friend,
John Holbrook.
Kit meets and tells her
aunt Rachel, uncle Matthew, about her newly orphaned status. Hearing this, her uncle allows her to stay.
Soon, Kit is introduced to her
two cousin sisters, Judith and Mercy and to her chores. Her life at Wethersfield is quite contrasting to her life at Barbados. At Wethersfield, she is introduced to laboring chores as compared to her easy life surrounded by servants in Barbados. She is also required to attend all the church meeting services.
Meanwhile, she meets
William Ashby, who begins courting her. However, she does not reciprocate the same feelings, as she finds him very judgmental.
Kit and Mercy begin teaching in
the dame school (elementary school) for young children. Bored of the normal lessons, Kit decides to play a little enactment game with the children. Enraged that play was an excerpt from the Bible,
Mr. Eleazer Kimberly (the school head), shuts down the school. Heartbroken, Kit takes off into the meadows. Here she meets an elderly woman called,
Hanna Tupper. Kit learns that Hanna Tupper is banished from Massachusetts colony for being a
Quaker, and she is believed to be a witch. Both develop a deep friendship, and even after being barred from meeting her new friend, Kit keeps visiting her secretly. During one of her visits she meets Nat. And without realizing both fall in love with each other. She later learns that he has been banished from Wethersfield for playing a jealous prank in William Ashby's home.
Despite her secret rendezvous with Nat and Hanna, she makes time to teach Prudence to read and write. Prudence is claimed to be an intellectually disabled child or halfwit child by her mother, Goodwife Cruff, and thus, isn't allowed to attend the dame school for young children.
A fever strikes the youth of the town. The enraged people of the town are looking for someone to blame, and decide that it is a curse cast by Hanna Tupper. They form a mob to burn down her house. Unfortunately for them, Kit saves Hanna in the nick of time and ships her off. With Hanna gone, the angry mob targets Kit, and they accuse her of taking part in witchcraft rituals along with Hanna. Goodwife and her husband Mr. Cruff, inform the mob that they have found her
hornbook (paddle used to teach alphabets) along with their daughter Prudence's name repeatedly written on a piece of paper. Nat comes to her rescue with little Prudence by his side. Prudence then testifies for Kit, informing the mob that Kit was secretly teaching her to read and write, and that it was she who wrote her name herself. She further reads out a passage from the Bible and writes her name as proof, putting everything to rest.
The next day the Wood's announce the girls' engagement, Mercy to John Holbrook and Judith to William Ashby. Kit decides to return to Barbados and become a governess. Nat who had fled to save himself from punishment returns with his own ship called
The Witch, named after Kit. He asks her to marry him, as a condition to allow her to board his ship. The two leave to take permission for their holy alliance.