Introduction

Is witchcraft or revenge to blame when men from a remote Hungarian village start dropping dead?

Teenage Sari's smart, inquisitive nature would be enough to make her an outcast in her remote Hungarian village; add to that her knowledge of healing herbs, and she's widely considered a witch.
 
When the men leave to fight World War I, however, everything changes. Without their oppressive and often abusive husbands and boyfriends, the women at last taste freedom and independence, and Sari makes friends. She and a number of other women in the village even begin relationships with injured Italian POWs housed nearby. Swept up in an intellectual and passionate love affair with a university professor, Sari's mind and body awaken for the first time in her life.
 
With the war's end, the men of the village return. Sari's freedom--and her newfound friendships--are imperiled. But just as Sari knows the herbs that will heal, she knows as well those that will kill. It takes several weeks for the arsenic, sprinkled her fiancé's food, to finish him off. The first poisoning leads to another, and then another. Based on a true story, this novel shows how a good person can be led to evil, and how a community can come together to conceal unspeakable crimes.

Editorial Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011: The Angel Makers, Jessica Gregson's engrossing debut, fleshes out the bones of a bizarre true story. In a remote Hungarian village, brutish men's departure for World War I offers a welcome reprieve to their womenâ??many have endured regular beatings (and worse). In the years of their husbands' absence, women's friendships deepen, and they find previously unimagined satisfaction in work and romance with Italian prisoners at a camp on the town's outskirts. Even Sari, the clever midwife's assistant suspected of witchcraft, succumbs to the charms of Marco. When Sari's injured fiancé returns from war a changed, frighteningly violent man, she makes a desperate decision to save herself and her unborn baby, poisoning her fiancé slowly enough to avoid detection. But other desperate women take notice, forcing Sari to choose between helping them perform similar deeds and being exposed as a murderess.

In truth, between 45 and 300 people were intentionally poisoned in Nagyrév, Hungary, over 15 years during and after WWI. Gregson's version of events is horrifically plausible and psychologically astute, and Sari makes a surprisingly sympathetic narrator. --Mari Malcolm

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Jessica Gregson on The Angel Makers

From the very first moment I came across the story, I knew I had to write about it.

It was just a couple of paragraphs in a true crime paperback I'd picked up in a bored, slightly morbid moment, to read on a train ride. The bulk of the chapters were about lone, crazy serial killers, and so the outline of the events surrounding "The Angel Makers of Nagyrev" stood out. The bare bones of the story were intriguing: a female-driven murder plague in an isolated village, against the backdrop of the First World War. I was astonished that no one had written about it already!

Once I started to write, though, my story started to shift further and further away from what had been the main focus of the story--the murders. The more I wrote, the more interested I became in the part that came before: what could have compelled the real women behind the story to commit actions that seem, from an outside perspective, abhorrent and unforgiveable.

What were these women's lives like? What sorts of conditions might have led them to behave as they did? What was it about that place, and that time, that caused the women to succumb to such a strangely specific madness? I don't intend to excuse the actions of my characters, or the actions of the women on whom they are based, but I do try to show how easy it might be to move, step by step, outside the bonds of morality that keep (most of us) constrained.

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Discussion Questions

1. The central characters of The Angel Makers are ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Do you sympathise with the decisions that the main characters make? Why or why not?
2. The prologue and epilogue are the only parts in the novel when we directly hear Sari’s voice, and throughout the novel we see Sari through the eyes of a number of different characters. But how do you think Sari sees herself? And what sort of person do you think she would be outside of the context of the village?
3. The novel opens with a funeral, foreshadowing the central role of death in The Angel Makers. Do you think that there are other examples of foreshadowing in the novel? Are the events that unfold predictable or unexpected?
4. How do you think the setting of the village and the plain affect the mood and the action of the novel?
5. The question of whether Judit and Sari have powers beyond the mundane comes up many times in the novel. Where do you think the line lies beyond reality and the supernatural, in terms of what Judit and Sari do?
6. Although the majority of the main characters are women, there are some very significant male characters in the novel. How would you describe gender relations within the world of The Angel Makers? Do you feel it’s an accurate portrayal?
7. Much of the book deals with a series of small and gradual changes that bring about a highly unusual situation in the village. Do you feel that there is a ‘turning point’ in the book, where things could have turned out differently, or are the outcomes inevitable because of what has come before?
8. Following Marco’s death, Sari tells herself that their relationship would never have worked beyond the specific context in which it started. Do you think that this is true, or is Sari just trying to convince herself? Similarly, do you believe that Marco really loves Sari as he claims?
9. One of the central themes of the book is the idea of personal choice and responsibility. Why do you think Bela chooses to give Orsolya’s money to Sari? How do you imagine this choice will affect him in future?
10. Do you find the ending of the novel to be a hopeful one? What sort of future do you envisage for Sari and Rozsi?

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