The author of Cleopatra: A Life, the Pulitzer Prize winner Véra and the George Washington Book Prize winner A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Stacy Schiff here takes us back to Salem, Massachusetts, in the bitter winter of 1692. The story begins when a minister's daughter begins to scream and convulse, and ends less than a year later, after 20 men and women have been executed for practicing witchcraft. Like a psychological thriller, Schiff 's book explores why some of the most educated and prominent citizens in the colony succumbed to panic, as neighbor accused neighbor and parents and children pointed at one another.