The Hangman’s Daughter By Oliver Pötzsch
Oliver Pötzsch grew up in Germany having his grandmother always compare his habits and behaviors to being either Kuisl or not Kuisl. For a while he was unsure whether being Kuisl was good or bad. As his grandmother began to tell him family stories, Oliver realized his ancestors, the Kuisls, were famous. What made them famous though? They were a well-known dynasty of Bavarian executioners in the 1600s! This peculiar family history inspired Oliver to write The Hangman’s Daughter and the executioner, Jakob Kuisl is based on Oliver’s great-great-grandfather.
The Hangman’s Daughter is the first in a 5 book series that is full of somber history of what life was like in the 1600s for an executioner and his family in Schongau, Bavaria. Older townspeople still remember the mass cleansing of witches and have been thankful for their absence the past few decades. But then rumors begin to spread of a devil with a bone hand helping a witch murder orphans in the town. The orphans all have a witch’s mark on their back and were all at the midwife’s house the night before. Is the midwife a witch harming the very children she “magically” brought into the world? Have witches returned to Schongau? And what of the devil with the bone hand? Clever Magdalena, the town executioner’s daughter, is determined to bring logic to this hysteria surrounding this mystery.
Oliver Pötzsch writes such a truly gripping tale of mystery blended with history that you won’t want to put this book down! I look forward to more Kuisl tales in this series.