Great Mischief

Timothy Partridge was an apothecary of Charleston who had a secret passion for the dark Satanic arts, and a mind obsessed with the problem of Good and Evil. He knew the ingredients of witches' brews, and had been brought up on legends of zombies and werewolves. So it would hardly be surprising if he were ridden by a hag, and scarcely more unusual for him to visit the Adversary's court. It seems that hags, especially blue-eyed hags, can be very attractive companions for lonely bachelors. When one of them looks over your garden wall on a summer's day, it is only natural to invite her in. Or so at least Timothy thought. That was just a part of the experience which changed the little man's life. And when the earthquake came to Charleston, and the ground yawned and belched forth fire at his feet, how was Timothy to know that it was not the Judgement Day? In this most engaging and provocative of novels, Josephine Pinckney plays a theme that may be taken either as fantasy or as gentle psychological realism.