About
Brenda Murphy is the author of more than twenty books, mostly about American theatre and drama. Her non-fiction work includes The Theatre of Tennessee Williams (Bloomsbury, 2014) , The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge, 2005), and Eugene O'Neill Remembered (Alabama, 2018). Recently she has been writing mainly historical fiction. Besides When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story (Bricktop Hill, 2023), about the healing of Salem Village after the trials, her recent fiction includes Becoming Carlotta: A Biographical Novel (Bricktop Hill, 2018), based on the life of the notorious actress Carlotta Monterey, and After the Voyage: An Irish American Story (Bricktop Hill, 2016), based on the experience of her immigrant family in the Boston area from 1870 until the 1930s. After teaching at St. Lawrence University in New York and the University of Connecticut, Brenda now lives in Maryland where she enjoys writing full time surrounded by deer and horse farms.
Featured Work
When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story
“A surprisingly hopeful look at how betrayal, loss, and guilt can change the lives of a community and shape history”
--Booklife
This fact-based historical novel takes us beyond the witch trials to tell a larger story of what happened in Salem Village.
In 1692, Ann Putnam is a central figure in the trials that bring devastation to the village and deep divisions among its people.
Five years later, in love and eager to marry, Joseph Green takes on the ministry that no one else wants and sets about healing the village. Together they will make an appeal that might finally unite their bitterly divided community.
