The Burning Time

""`I dreamed a fire consumed us all!' Mme. Trembley shook her gnarled finger at us and screamed.'' Such are the portentous opening lines of this feverish novel about a witch hunt in 16th-century France. Through no fault of her own, Rose Rives's mother has earned the enmity of many neighbors: the doctor bitterly resents her midwifery skills, which far surpass his own; the priest hates her for spurning his sexual advances; her late husband's brothers want control over her land; jealous wives accuse her of bewitching their husbands. When a judge arrives in town demanding the names of witches, Mama's is among the first submitted. As she did in Daniel's Story, Matas insists on casting her protagonist in every scene, and she seeks out the extreme: Rose watches the vicious torture of her mother, eavesdrops on the judge's deliberations with the lewd priest, sneaks in and out of her mother's jail cell. The overweening injustice of it all may grab YA audiences; however, Matas limits her impact with her inability to convey historical drama through any but the crudest filters. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)