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THE FLYPAPER WITCH MURDERS
By Mary Candace Mize
THE FLYPAPER
WITCH
Mary Candace Mize
A story of spousal abuse and revenge in Hungary after WWI
Loosely based upon trials in the 1930s, THE FLYPAPER WITCH is an historic novel about a midwife who encourages her patients to poison their brutal husbands with arsenic flypaper in revenge for the murder of her father, a shaman who brings Finno-Ugric practices back to Hungary after centuries of suppression.
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After Piri's fiance flees, believing he has killed her rapist, she is forced to marry an old man who murdered his first wife. He beats her while she is pregnant, and the midwife tells Piri her husband will destroy her if she doesn't protect herself. Deeply torn, she reluctantly agrees.
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The midwife officiates over Finno-Ugric funeral and burial practices, and mentors Piri in cures and midwifery. We follow the shaman's early travels to Lapland to learn Finno-Ugric shamanism. He marries in southern Finland, and her mother dies in childbirth. He and his daughter escape from the Gypsies, and he returns to Hungary with her. A group of thugs murders him, and she places a curse on them and their sons. The midwife treats the villagers, supports the women, and forms a Finno-Ugric cult.
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The villagers, a gendarme who discovers the murders, and a journalist from the nobility round out the depiction of a town in crisis after World War I in Europe's poorest country.
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With as many love interests as featured murders, THE FLYPAPER WITCH is not a male-bashing book. Its themes include gender inequality, domestic abuse, bullying, Finno-Ugric myths and practices, midwifery, and PTSD.
THE FLYPAPER WITCH MURDERS
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