Describes the witch hunt that took place in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1692, detailing the story of Kate Branch, a seventeen-year-old afflicted by strange visions and given to wails of pain and fright, who accused several women of bewitching her.

A narrative on the lesser-known sexual values and customs of colonial Americans repudiates conventional Puritanical stereotypes to profile the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped two hundred years of sexual diversity, discussing Puritan attitudes toward sex, the influence of race and class, and a shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century.

Early New Englanders used magical techniques to divine the future, to heal the sick, to protect against harm and to inflict harm. Protestant ministers of the time claimed that religious faith and magical practice were incompatible, and yet, as Richard Godbeer shows, there were significant affinities between the two that enabled layfolk to switch from one to the other without any immediate sense of wrongdoing. Godbeer argues that the different perspectives on witchcraft engendered by magical tradition and Puritan doctrine often caused confusion and disagreement when New Englanders sought legal punishment of witches.