Remembering Jeanne Rose 1937-2024

Jeanne Rose is a very important American herbalist, aromatherapy expert, and author. For over fifty years, she has been a key figure in connecting old traditions about plants with modern health trends. Many people credit her with bringing aromatherapy (using essential oils) back into popular use in the United States.

How She Started

Rose started her work in the 1960s, when many people began getting interested in natural living and alternative health. She traveled widely, including studying Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine) in India. This experience taught her to look at health holistically, treating the mind, body, and spirit as one connected unit.

Her Game-Changing Books

• Her first major book, Herbs & Things (1972), became a must-read for new herbalists.
• Her book, Jeanne Rose's Herbal Body Book (1976), truly made her famous. It was an easy-to-use guide that showed people how to use herbs in their daily life—for beauty products, health, and cooking.
• She encouraged a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) approach to natural self-care, which was a revolutionary idea at the time, getting readers to actively work with the plants around them.

Her Impact on Aromatherapy

Besides herbalism, Rose is a leading expert in clinical aromatherapy. She played a crucial role in setting high standards for essential oil quality and sourcing. She insisted on knowing the precise botanical names and chemical makeup (chemotypes) of oils—a strict practice that is now standard for all professional aromatherapists.

She later created the Jeanne Rose Aromatherapy Institute to properly teach and certify people in the field.

Her Lasting Legacy

Through her many books, classes, and advocacy for pure, high-quality, and sustainable practices, Jeanne Rose created the foundation for the widespread acceptance of herbal and essential oil therapies we see today. She has inspired countless individuals to explore the benefits of plant-based wellness.

Carolina Dean 

Links

• Jeanne Rose's Obituary 
• Jeanne Rose's Herbal Body Book (12th House Books) 
• Jeanne Rose's Herbal Guide to Inner Health (12th House Books) 

Review: Witch and Tell, Angela M Sanders (2025)

Angela M. Sanders truly shines in Witch and Tell, delivering the seventh installment of the Witch Way Librarian Mysteries with her signature wit, charm, and a delightful infusion of supernatural angst. This time around, our beloved apprentice witch and librarian, Josie Way, finds herself facing a unique trifecta of challenges: a boyfriend who's gone radio silent after she revealed her witchy truth, powers that are suddenly on the fritz, and the baffling case of a corpse that appears and promptly vanishes from the locked library atrium.

What makes this book such a compelling entry is how Sanders expertly weaves Josie’s personal, relatable struggles—the anxiety of a relationship in limbo and the frustration of feeling disconnected from her own abilities—into a high-stakes, twisty mystery. The bad energy gripping the town of Wilfred feels palpable, and the disruption of Josie's connection to her spellbound library books raises the investigative stakes higher than ever. Her reliance on her magical grandmother's lessons and the always-entertaining presence of her cat familiar, Rodney, add essential layers of humor and heart.

The mystery itself is wonderfully plotted, featuring a cast of shady suspects and the introduction of potential long-lost relatives that keeps the reader guessing until the final pages. Sanders maintains a perfect balance of cozy small-town ambiance and genuine intrigue, ensuring that the book is a compulsively readable escape. For fans of the series, this is a pitch-perfect continuation that deepens the world and promises exciting developments for Josie’s future. For newcomers, it serves as a great example of the series' winning formula, proving that even when magic fails, a determined librarian never does. Five stars for this enchanting adventure!

Carolina Dean 
Book Witch 

Review: Hour of the Witch, Chris Bohjalian (2021)

Chris Bohjalian's Hour of the Witch plunges the reader into the rigid, terrifying world of Puritan Boston in 1662, delivering a historical thriller that feels surprisingly relevant. The novel centers on Mary Deerfield, a strong-willed, twenty-four-year-old woman trapped in a violent marriage to Thomas Deerfield, a wealthy miller nearly twice her age. When Thomas’s abuse escalates to the point of driving a three-tined fork into her hand, Mary—a resourceful woman with a deep sense of self-preservation—takes the radical step of petitioning the Court of Assistants for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

This choice is the crucible of the novel. Bohjalian meticulously captures the suffocating, patriarchal society where Satan is considered as real as one's neighbor, and divorce is a scandalous, near-impossible feat for a woman. As Mary navigates the legal system, where the magistrates often seem more concerned with her "wifely obedience" and failure to bear children than her husband’s brutality, her pursuit of freedom quickly devolves into a desperate fight for her life.

Bohjalian is a master of dread, and he layers the historical detail with unsettling suspense. The book's central motif—the three-tined fork, viewed by the Puritans as the "Devil's tines"—is used brilliantly to illustrate the era's pervasive superstition. When strange, cursed objects are discovered in Mary's garden and circumstantial evidence mounts against her, her petition for divorce shifts into a trial for witchcraft.

The novel is at its strongest in the courtroom scenes, which are both frustrating and riveting. The author uses snippets of historical court documents to preface chapters, building a sense of impending doom and highlighting the chilling hypocrisy of the men in power. Mary’s strength lies not in being a modern-day iconoclast, but in her deeply human struggle to survive within the confines of her world, forcing readers to contemplate the timelessness of victim-blaming and institutionalized misogyny.

While the first half can be a slower burn as Bohjalian constructs the Puritan world—from the period-authentic dialogue to the daily routines—the latter half is an addictive, tightly-plotted rush toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Hour of the Witch is far more than a simple witch trial story. It’s a compelling piece of historical fiction that doubles as a psychological thriller, using the backdrop of 17th-century Boston to explore themes of female agency, power, and survival against a society determined to silence strong women. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy historical accuracy fused with high-stakes suspense.

Carolina Dean
12th House Books