Katharina Kepler was a widow in her seventies in a small German town, illiterate, sharp-tongued, in the business of mixing herbal remedies, and the mother of Johannes Kepler, who by then had worked out how the planets move. In 1615 a neighbor named Ursula Reinbold accused her of handing over a bitter drink that made her ill. It went from there — six years of accusations, a witchcraft trial, fourteen months chained in a cell, and her famous son coming home to write her legal defense. Galchen gives Katharina the narration, and she’s funny and stubborn and completely unaware of how bad this is going to get.
Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch