It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good story starts with a good first line. In TODAY’s “Cold Open,” authors tease their buzzy upcoming release by revealing and explaining its first line, paragraph or page.
Alice Hoffman, author of the “Practical Magic” series, is back with another book about witches, but they’re not the Owens sisters.
“The Witches of Cambridge,” out Sept. 8 and named as Read with Jenna’s September pick, unfolds at a secret society for witches at Radcliffe College in the 1950s.
Ava, unaware of her magical heritage, and Lauren, who is extremely aware of hers, both come to terms with their powers and legacies against the backdrop of the Red Scare. As Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts play out miles away in Washington, D.C. Lauren and Ava explore the lingering presence of the Salem Witch Trials in their own lives and in Cambridge.
The book opens with an evocative sentence about Ava’s isolated childhood in Maine, where she was raised by parents who wanted to hem her in and deny her magic.
In every story there is a beginning, and this was hers, the one she had been waiting for all her life.
The opening line of Alice hoffman’s “The Witches of Cambridge”
“That’s the way I want my life to open,” Hoffman tells TODAY.com, laughing.
In a way, Hoffman’s life reads like a story. She grew up in a single-parent, working-class household. A self-described “secret writer,” Hoffman never thought she could become an author, and she nearly dropped out of high school. Her older brother, studying in California, encouraged her to attend college. Her writing career unfolded fast while at Stanford: She won a writing award and published her first novel at 21. Since then, she has published 30 books.
Ava’s life also opens when she goes to college.
“Ava going off from Maine to have a different life, she doesn’t really know who she is. She goes off to Cambridge and she’s with people very different than she grew up with. This is the beginning for her,” she says.
Hoffman had a second college experience, one that inspired “The Witches of Cambridge,” when she decided to study at the Harvard Divinity School.
“I was surrounded by younger people with so much kind of hope. It was definitely their beginnings,” she says. “I felt very influenced by being with a lot of young people who were searching and looking to kind of restart their lives.”
“The Witches of Cambridge” follows a four-year college experience, and then some, for Lauren and Ava. But it doesn’t end with an ending. Hoffman says the first line echoes the last line of the book.
All you had to do was begin.
The last line of “The witches of Cambridge”
Their lives are cyclical: right when one chapter ends, another begins. Hoffman feels she isn’t done following their story, and is currently at work on a sequel.
“I feel like it could end where it did, but there’s so much more that could happen,” she says.
