A young English orphan arrives in America to be greeted by an atmosphere of shadowy terror and a wave of Puritan suspicion. She settles with her uncle's family in Salem, Massachusetts, on the eve of the world's most notorious witch hunt.

Lois Barclay is a typical ingénue: a well of affection and understanding waiting to be tapped. The New England she experiences, however, is prey to a host of fears - of Indians, of witches, of the Evil One himself. Lois finds all her attempts at friendship misunderstood, her Anglican upbringing a source of mistrust and censure, and her very attractiveness a potential curse. In this moving novella, Gaskell provides a fictionalised account of one of the victims of the Salem witch trials of 1692, using it to highlight the very human dangers of religious bigotry and sexual repression.