a novel in poetry by LAURA SECORD

JANUARY 24, 2025  *  7:30pm
 

Terrific New Theater is excited to be the home of a staged reading of Laura Secord’s AN ART, A CRAFT, A MYSTERY, winner of The Alabama Library Associations 2024 Prize.

AN ART, A CRAFT, A MYSTERY  tells the stories of two real women, Lydea Gilbert and Kate Gilbert Harrison, who were accused of witchcraft. They lived along the frontier of the Connecticut River in the mid 1600s.  They were healers, midwives, farmers and ordinary women who faced the struggles and joys of life in a wild new land. They were women in a puritan culture, women of intuitive genius and healing powers, who lived through times where feminine power and the value of women's lives was suspect and condemned.

FROM THE AUTHOR, Laura Secord:

Today we are living in a country that is forgetting its history.  Some law-makers are legislating against learning our nation’s real history, as others attempt to swing us back to times where feminine power and the value of women’s lives was suspect and condemned.  It is critical that we remember and understand the labors, sacrifices and contributions of the unsung creators of our society, the women, the Indigenous, the enslaved— who built and maintained daily life, and nurtured all to flourish.  With these thoughts in mind, we are donating all profits to two organizations fighting for freedom of thought, and the bodily autonomy of women in Alabama.