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"Bridget's feelings about Benjamin conflict with her dream of a normal life"

Bridget Goodwell has a secret talent that makes her different from everyone else in Salem, but at the beginning of LIGHT A SINGLE CANDLE, she is doing her best to hide her abnormality. She longs for a normal life with a loving husband and children, and she thinks that is just what she will have when she marries her fiancée and childhood friend, Peter.

Then Benjamin, another of her childhood playmates, returns to Salem and stirs up different longings in Bridget. Longings for a freer time in her life when she wasn't constrained by the need to be a sedate, proper woman that she has spent the years of her engagement suppressing. She and Benjamin renew their friendship, but she becomes more and more disturbed by the feelings she has for him.

At the same time that she trying to sort out her feelings for Peter and Benjamin; she begins to realize her life is in danger. Several "accidents" happen that could have resulted in her death, and instinctively she knows that something evil is behind the attacks, and they have something to do with her special power. What she does not yet understand is that the threat to her life is connected with the MacInness curse. As the reader learns in the prologue, the women of this clan had a curse placed on them by a witch from a rival clan. The curse was placed on the family in 1692 at the height of the Salem Witch trials. It is now 1792, and there are only a few short months left to find a way to break the curse.

Bridget's story is the first in a trilogy about the MacInnesses, and it certainly made me want to read the next two books. I could easily identify with Bridget, and I liked her character. The tension between her and Benjamin was well written and quite believable.

I have not read many historicals set in this time or place, so the uniqueness of the setting was appealing. While the magic that Bridget can do is important, her conflicting feelings about Benjamin are the primary focus, so this would be a good book to recommend to someone who is unsure about paranormals.

PNR reviews © Copyright March 2002
Reviewed by Sarah Neal

Reviewed by Sarah Neal
Posted February 28, 2002

Go Through Fire . . . Headstrong Bridget Goodwell is determined that nothing will prevent her coming wedding to eminently respectable Peter Holton. All her life she has longed for stability, decorum - anything to deny the otherworldly secret she's hidden for so long from the suspicious townspeople of Salem, Massachusetts. But three weeks before the ceremony, Benjamin Hawkes drops anchor in Salem's harbor, threatening everything she has planned. Reckless, incredibly alluring Benjamin - Bridget's first love - is the only person who ever suspected that beneath her proper fascade lay a dangerous gift. Unable to deny the feelings he awakens in her, Bridget is horrified to discover that her love for him will lead her to an ancient curse, a legacy of witchcraft, and Benjamin's certain death - unless the passion that blazes between them breaks a powerful spell.