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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.
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.
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 . . .
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?
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
July 1, 2014 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780698154926
- File size: 389402 KB
- Duration: 13:31:15
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- LexileÂź Measure: 770
- Text Difficulty: 3-4
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Reviews
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Starred review from April 28, 2014
As she did in her adult novel The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Howe draws thrilling connections between the Salem witch trials and the present day in her YA debut. Colleen Rowley and her friends attend St. Joanâs Academy, a private Catholic high school in Boston that caters to girls with Harvard-size aspirations. After Colleenâs classmate Clara has a strange seizure during class, Clara develops shocking, Touretteâs-like verbal and facial tics. The condition soon spreads through the school until there are dozens of girls with inexplicable and divergent symptomsâColleenâs friend Anjali has started coughing up pins. The school nurse and local medical professionals scroll futilely through diagnoses, and the media descends on St. Joanâs, making life a circus for the girls and their families. Howe gives Colleen a strong and sure voice, while alternating between the present-day action in 2012 and âInterludesâ set in Salem Village in 1706. A chilling guessing game of a novel that will leave readers thinking about the power (and powerlessness) of young women in the past and present alike. Ages 12âup. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor. -
Khristine Hvam narrates parallel stories of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Salem and a mystery illness that strikes a private girls' school in present-day Massachusetts. Hvam expertly differentiates the plotlines, using a refined and quiet voice for the story of Ann Putnam, while the contemporary story, told through the eyes of high school senior Colleen Rowley, is more fast paced and vibrant. Colleen's voice has all the emotion of a stressed-out teen who is trying to cope with the pressures of high school. All the supporting characters, from the school nurse to Colleen's "maybe" boyfriend, have distinct voices that fit their roles. Ann's part of the plot doesn't have as much action, but Hvam's delivery creates a narrative drive that keeps listeners engaged. E.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
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