Of Her Blood, the debut of Rozina Hyland, follows a 17th century woman living with the ramifications of her mother being executed for witchcraft several years before. Tilda works as a servant in a wealthy household, enduring the abuse of both the Mistress and Master of the house. She is largely shunned by the other servants as well due to the stigma she carries because of her mother. The only people friendly to Tilda are the Master’s daughter, Imogen, and the local Butcher’s boy, Elias.
Imogen is educated and open-minded, often engaging Tilda in conversation about literary or philosophical topics. Tilda is surprised about this at first–how could someone of Imogen’s social standing view Tilda as an equal? Realizing Imogen’s genuine nature, Tilda lets her walls down and their relationship blossoms into something more. But when Imogen is married off, Tilda turns to Elias for comfort. At first, their relationship is sweet and respectful, but Elias undergoes such a startling change by the end of the book that readers will really feel quite betrayed and disgusted by him. And just when Tilda’s life starts looking too good to be true, the past catches up to her in devastating ways.
Without getting into too many spoilers, it’s important to discuss the themes of Hyland’s book. Sexuality, gender roles and norms, socioeconomic power struggles, generational trauma, misogyny…all factors that contributed to the historical context of women being accused of witchcraft. While I’ve read many witch trial-centered books that generally hit all the same plot points, I found Of Her Blood to be very much focused on Tilda’s thoughts and emotions rather than outer world building context or hitting all the familiar plot points of other witch books. The authenticity of Tilda comes through very strongly for the reader, albeit at times some readers may view her beliefs as being too modern, however, I believe the author’s aim was to illustrate the similarities in today’s world. Of Her Blood ended a bit abruptly, but I gathered from that choice Hyland wants the reader to focus on Tilda’s life and character, rather than the ultimate outcome.
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