If you have found this booklet, I am hopefully already dead, buried next to my father and mother, within spitting distance of Thomas, Elsie, and Sally Somers. And, though it is called the Gilley Burying Ground, my father would be irked (when was he not?) to lie for eternity next to the neighbors he so despised. Though I wanted to understand his feelings, I wanted even more to understand the Somers, whose exploits in Southwest Harbor were the subject of so much scrutiny and conjecture, but whose daily lives were full of earnest hard work. They gave generously to the community in times of need, and strove, like the rest of us, to coax a good life from these rocky shores.

And, if you have the inkling to listen through to the end, I hope you will be slow to judge myself and everyone else herein, for as our savior once said, “Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.” I think you will find that no one involved was perfect, least of all me.

Dog Mountain Witch is both a novel and a remarkable piece of Maine History. Sally Somers was executed for witchcraft near her home in Southwest Harbor, Maine, in 1832, on hundred and forty years after the executions at Salem.

Sally's story is told by her neighbor, Prudence Gilley, daughter of the town physician. All of the events in the novel are based on the locally produced history books found in the Southwest Harbor Public Library.