Author Alice Hoffman discusses 'Practical Magic 2' and new novel

With "Practical Magic 2” in movie theaters and her latest novel, "The Witches of Cambridge" (Scribner, $29), in bookstores, it's an exciting time for native Long Islander Alice Hoffman. Though she lives in Massachusetts, she grew up in Franklin Square, attended Valley Stream North High School and went on to study at both Adelphi and Stony Brook universities. As the founder of the Adelphi University Writers and Readers Festival and the force behind a summer program for teens there, her ties to local readers and writers remain strong. She spoke to Newsday over Zoom about the background of her latest witchy works.

Tell us about the decision to set "The Witches of Cambridge" in the 1950s, with the McCarthy witch hunt in Washington as the backdrop to stories of Ava and Lauren, two young witches in their freshman year at Radcliffe in the 1950s, as well as their ancestors, the witches of New England, in the 1690s.

About three years ago, I began a master's program at the Harvard Divinity School, and this novel began as a paper for my most difficult class. The assignment was to write about someone at Harvard you disagree with. Right away I thought of the Mather family. Increase Mather, the seventh president of Harvard and his son Cotton Mather, the force behind the Salem witch trials — between the two of them, they caused great harm to women. I got permission to write the paper as fiction and that's where the 17th century storyline originated. After I graduated, I decided to expand the paper into a novel, adding a 20th century plot that shows how little has changed for women in some areas.

The girls become involved with a fictional Mather descendant, Jamie Mather, who has magical gifts he's been raised to despise.

I was thinking about our current situation, where many people find themselves disagreeing politically and socially and every other way with the people in their families, which can tear them apart. That's Jamie's situation. His ancestors are both witches and witch hunters and he has to find out who he is and what he believes in that context. His family history is at odds with his true nature, and his relationship with Ava makes that impossible to ignore.

The novel suggests that Lauren and Ava's friendship was fated, that a secret in the past that we don't learn till the end of the novel, drew them to Lilith House at Radcliffe together. Does your writing about magic reflect the way you think about your life?

To me, everything is kind of magic. Magic — science — religion — they're all interrelated. Do I believe in fate? I'm not sure, I'm still thinking that one over but certainly it seems like some things were meant to be, and you don't even realize it until afterwards.

Where do all the spells and herbal concoctions in the book come from?

I have a huge magic library, with books of spells and rituals and instructions for various ceremonies, as well as nature, herbs, gardening and trees. I get many ideas from these books but am careful never to include anything that could cause harm to someone.

Well, that's a relief! You've been writing about magic and witches since the 1980s and in that time, the literary world's relation to the subject has changed quite a bit.

It's true. I was always drawn to myth and magic. I loved Ray Bradbury, the Edward Eager series, and all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. But back when I started, if you were a woman and you wrote books about magic, it was seen as genre fiction rather than "literature." Now there's a much more open feeling and it's less about whether a book is literary, more about what's actually good.

Along the same lines, when the first "Practical Magic" movie came out 30 years ago, it was a huge flop. At that time, there weren't many movies about women, sisterhood, magic, families and friendship, and that made it easy for the critics to dismiss. But over the years, people have gone back to it and it's become kind of a mother-daughter-grandmother cult film. These days, the bonds between women are taken much more seriously, which makes it a great time for the sequel.

Reuniting the original cast — Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest!

I think people have come to feel very close to those actors and the characters that they play. The witches are quite a bit older than they were in the first film, but as you know, life goes on. I believe we can create our own families out of friendships, and that theme is important in both the movie and the sequel I'm now working on to "The Witches of Cambridge."