From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mysteryâPrep meets The Crucible.
Â
Itâs senior year at St. Joanâs Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boysâ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they canât.
Â
First itâs the schoolâs queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joanâs buzzes with rumor; rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.
Â
Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleenâwhoâs been reading The Crucible for extra creditâcomes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .
Â
Inspired by true eventsâfrom seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high schoolâConversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, whatâs really happening to the girls at St. Joanâs?