Reasons you should read Salem's Daughter instead of The Crucible: 
 1. The Crucible is a literary masterpiece. Salem's Daughter is a potboiler historical romance. 
 3. Salem's Daughter is rich with accurate historical detail. The Crucible is thin gruel. 
 3. A lusty bodice ripper is woven into Salem's Daughter. 
 4. Maggie Osborne, the author of Salem's Daughter, created her characters and their everyday lives with an intuitive sense of the weirdness and contradiction at the heart of Puritan Calvinism. 
 5. Bristol Adams has better breasts. 
 When Puritan lass Bristol Adams flirts too much with Caleb Wainwright, a sandy-haired farmer, Bristol's father exiles the young beauty by ship to England to live with her staid Aunt Prudence. Except once on board The Challenger, Bristol encounters a randy crew, pirates, and a dark-haired, grey-eyed seafarer whose "sheer maleness" and chest hair "oddly disturb" the almost virginal Bristol. There on the beating waves, Bristol experiences a sensual awakening. Actually, multiple sensual awakenings. When she arrives in London, Bristol discovers Aunt Prudence is no dour Puritan but a leading society lady whose wealth is beyond imagination. Because of a tragic injury to her father, Bristol returns to Salem Village, marries the young farmer who turns out to be plagued by chronic premature ejaculation, and becomes embroiled, so to speak, in the Salem Witch Trials. 
 Salem's Daughter provides fine entertainment and an engaging, well-written story. As pure fiction, the book merits at least a 3.5 star rating. As escapist literature on my cheap thrills and kozmic blues shelf, Salem's Daughter is definitely a 4 star read at the very least. 
 Salem's Daughter is a historical romance. Novels in this genre tell stories of great romances that have taken place in the past. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are classic examples. Most modern historical romances feature female point of view characters, but that's certainly not a requirement. While not all historical romances are bodice rippers, virtually all bodice rippers are historical romances. 
 The formula for a bodice ripper goes like this. A young, beautiful woman with an independent streak encounters a smoldering male love interest. They share animal lust for each other but refuse to acknowledge love. Events separate the woman and the man, and an insurmountable obstacle arises which prevents the two from being together. The woman, man, and evil other woman attend a ball where the women wear fancy dresses (which are usually described in interminable detail). The evil other woman is almost always blonde, a little prettier and richer than the protagonist, and is a complete bitch. The protagonist and male love interest overcome the obstacle that separates them and discover true love. Along the way, clothes get ripped off. Use of purple prose constitutes no sin. Sex scenes are frequent, gauzy, and sensual. Bodice rippers give heterosexual male readers a peek, perhaps, into the id and superego of the female mind. 
 Salem's Daughter meets all the requirement of a bodice ripper, complete with the tearing of several of the heroine's blouses and dresses down the front of her body. The novel is more than a forgettable bodice ripper, however. Author Maggie Osborne avoids too much purple prose and writes vivid historical detail from the era of the Salem Witch Trials. Her prose is virtually flawless. Bristol Adams, her heroine, is complex, engaging, and admirable. The plot kept me reading despite its melodramatic twists and the narrative scrunching to make the story work. 
 Things I didn't like: 
 The editor's telephone call. A little over midway through the book Author Osborne must have gotten a reminder call from her editor warning the deadline for publication approached soon. The second half of the book seemed needlessly rushed and lacked the grace of the first half. 
 Action verb eyes. I hate action verb eyes as in "Her eyes swung from one side of the room to the other." "Her eyes locked on Charles." "Her eyes shot a look at Aunt Prudence." "Her eyes slid..." 
 A few additional things I did like: 
 The leading men were not control freak assholes whose crude and cruel treatment of women is somehow excused by having had a bad childhood. 
 The detailed clothing descriptions required of this genre were relatively short and did not send me into a state of bored lunacy. 
 The sex scenes did not read like gynecological exams performed by men with human tree trunks for penises. 
 Bristol's breasts occupy a prominent position in this book. In fact, if one would list characters by frequency of reference, Bristol's boobs would be the third leading character in this novel. I'm not complaining. She apparently had a fine pair, described variously as "full," "rounded," "lush," "generous," "pink and white," "milky," "swelling," "smooth," "rose and cream," "trembling," "misty," "creamy," and "satiny." 
 When Bristol visits a French seamstress to be measured for a gown to the wear to the ball, this is what happens: 
 [The seamstress] dropped the string to Bristol's breast and muttered, "Magnifique!" and shouted another number, then did the same for Bristol's waist and hips. 
 Arthur Miller, eat your heart out!