Tooth of the Covenant
A Novel
Best known for his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne was burdened by familial shame, which began with his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, the infamously unrepentant Salem witch trial judge. In this, the eighth stand-alone book in The American Novels series, we witness Hawthorne writing a tale entitled Tooth of the Covenant, in which he sends his fictional surrogate, Isaac Page, back to the year 1692 to save Bridget Bishop, the first person executed for witchcraft, and rescue the other victims from execution. But when Page puts on Hathorne’s spectacles, his worldview is transformed and he loses his resolve. As he battles his conscience, he finds that it is his own life hanging in the balance.
An ingenious and profound investigation into the very notion of universal truth and morality, Tooth of the Covenant probes storytelling’s depths to raise history’s dead and assuage the persistent ghost of guilt.
'[Norman Lock’s fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights.' — NPR
'[A] dazzling series...Lock’s supple, elegantly plain-spoken prose captures the generosity of the American spirit in addition to its moral failures, and his passionate engagement with our literary heritage evinces pride in its unique character.' —Washington Post
'Splendid....Lock masters the interplay between nineteenth-century Hawthorne and his fictional surrogate, Isaac, as he travels through Puritan New England. The historical details are immersive and meticulous.' —Foreword Reviews, starred review
'A distinctive and ambitious foray into literary history.' — Kirkus Reviews
'A reflective and subtly poignant look at Nathaniel Hawthorne...Lock displays a nimble virtuosity as he captures the speech of the time while demonstrating how the implicit bias, bigotry, and hypocrisy of Puritanism became the cancel culture of its day.' — Booklist
'The novel’s somber exploration of American cruelty and religious intolerance is balanced by its nimble prose, sly wit, and engaging glimpse of a literary figure. Lock’s latest ambitious look at America’s history will delight fans of the series and earn new converts.' — Publishers Weekly
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage and radio plays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and has been longlisted twice for the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He has also received writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.
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