Nanette, the granddaughter of Ursule is the only one of her clan who chooses to mix and mingle with anyone outside of Orchiére Farm. A line of witches descending from the powerful blood of the Romani, the book chronicles the lives of five individual women, their ascent into their own personal powers, and the choices they make with their new burden. She has passed from this world and on to the next, and although Nanette worries that they cannot possibly move ahead without the guidance of their leader, the Orchiére women must persevere.Ī Secret History of Witches is a study of five generations of women who must live their true lives in absolute secrecy. It is Nanette who finds her grand-mère in the morning when the sun first peeks from the clouds the old woman’s weathered and wrinkled skin is cold as ice. and to get as far away from men like the evil Father Bernard as they can get. The rising moor behind it will hold more for the Orchiére women than she can describe in her last moments on Earth, but Ursule urges her granddaughters to blindly push on ahead to this place of hidden sanctuary. Her last instructions to her clan is to head to a house beyond the seas and above a cliff a house with a thatched roof in need of many repairs. Using all of the force she can muster, Ursule projects everything she inside of her into weaving a charm of mystic secrecy and protection and as a result, she depletes herself down to the very core. Armed with her mysterious scrying stone and the oaken walking stick that emits a power only she can wield, Ursule casts a spell to hide the coven from those who hunt them. A line of witches, their power passed down from daughter to daughter, is a precious thing and something that must be cultivated through the art of ceremonial charms and gatherings, and must be protected at all costs. For in that town, they were beginning to burn witches.Īs the leader of the medieval Romani clan, Ursule had a lot to protect. Urging her granddaughters and their husbands along a gritty path with the overlapping waves of an uneasy ocean guiding their way, Ursule tried to spirit her loved ones as far away from the town as she could. It was a night shrouded in dense clouds in the year 1821 when the grizzled and gray Ursule Orchiére realized that her family was not safe.

A secret history of witches