The 18th century John Updike home on Pleasant Street in Wickford Village is not connected to novelist John Updike.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

NORTH KINGSTOWN Maybe witches are more interesting than widows. They’re certainly better known in the village of Wickford.

“I’ve heard of the witches,” says Barbara Cullen, owner of the Mystic Scrimshanders shop on Main Street. “But I haven’t heard of the widows.”

The widows are new to town. They surfaced about a month ago. A book announced their arrival, The Widows of Eastwick.

John Updike, author of the 1984 The Witches of Eastwick, is back to his fictitious plot in his fictitious Rhode Island town of Eastwick. Its characteristics and name amalgamate East Greenwich and Wickford.

The Widows of Eastwick (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95) is a sequel. And to Cullen, a longtime Updike reader, it’s a surprise.

“I’ve never heard of it. That’s not good, not for the sale of the book.”

So publicity is lacking.

Otherwise in the quaint village of Wickford, one would expect the Widows would be the talk of town. But most of the talk is brief: Huh?

Few have heard of the book, and fewer have read it.

“I really don’t think there will be much hubbub about it,” says Pat Carlson, one of the owners of Wickford Village Antiques. “People are more worried about the economy and their jobs and making ends meet than if there’s another book out.”

Well, there’s another book out. And it brings back the three wanton witches: Alexandra, Jane and Sukie, 24 years older, and puts them in a particular place: Eastwick, which is sometimes East Greenwich, but most of the time Wickford.

What, we wondered, did residents think? Even though few had read the book, we didn’t let a pesky detail like that keep us from asking them about it.

Some passages are a little provocative. Consider this one, describing the changes the witches see after being away nearly a quarter of a century: “…a few more chi-chi restaurants, and art galleries that come and go. Those scrawny trees downtown are strung with white Christmas lights all year long.”

Mike Sherman, one of the owners of the Wickford Package Store, has been in Wickford awhile and participated in the merchants’ Festival of Lights, which happens at the end of the year.

“What a dig. We took our Christmas lights down. Tell Updike that.”

A few merchants in Wickford found Updike’s characterization inaccurate, so inaccurate, in fact, it made many point to East Greenwich as the inspirational source.

So we read the passage to Bruce MacGunnigle, East Greenwich’s Main Street coordinator. He paused, sighed, then responded.

“That’s us. They’re Bartlett pear trees. They have lights on them all year, but they’re not lit all year. They are lit most of the winter. It gives it a kind of festive feel.”

Throughout The Widows of Eastwick you encounter town descriptions that belie the publisher’s disclaimer, “This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.”

It’s then quite a coincidence to discover that the fictitious town of Eastwick happens to have a Cocumscussoc Way, just as North Kingstown does. And the story takes place in an L-shaped seaside community formed by two main commercial roads, just as Brown and West Main Streets do in Wickford, which, like the book, has an old diner and a small grocery store, which has since closed.

Updike, who declined our request for an interview, as he did 24 years ago, speciously claimed in 1984 letters to Wickford residents that The Witches of Eastwick, which later became a movie starring Jack Nicholson, was not based on Wickford.

“Your claim that I have well depicted Wickford and its residents inspires me with mingled joy and terror, since I don’t really know Wickford at all, nor did I want to depict it,” Updike wrote in a letter to the late Sue Brandau, who claimed that Updike’s witches bore an uncanny resemblance to three of her friends, who she said had “profound powers.”

And in declining an invitation to speak at the North Kingstown Free Library in 1984, Updike wrote Deborah Brennan, the former librarian, saying “the connection of the setting of my novel with Wickford is so tenuous that I don’t want to emphasize it by appearing at such a function as you suggest.”

Updike, who exercises creative license in his book, does so in his correspondence as well. It’s well known that Updike visited Wickford several times before publishing The Witches of Eastwick, which he wrote in his letter to Brennan. Wickford has an Updike Park, it had a John Updike House Bed & Breakfast (no relation to the author) until 1999, and in 1707 it was called Updike’s Newtown, after its founder, Lodowick Updike.

Updike explored an ancestral connection.

But some things in The Widows of Eastwick aren’t drawn from life, such as the library in Eastwick, which Updike describes as “a 19th century benefaction of lump brownstone.”

The North Kingstown Free Library is a modern brick building.

“It would be lovely to think he has been here,” says Susan Aylward, the library’s director. “But I don’t think he has.”

It also wouldn’t appear that Updike is talking about the East Greenwich Free Library, which is made of granite. But it’s quite clear at times that when Updike is talking about the changes in Eastwick from 1984 to now, he’s talking about Wickford.

Updike mentions a Stop & Shop and a Home Depot that have been built on Route 102 just outside Wickford, which is the reality. He doesn’t mention the Wal-Mart or the Staples that have also been constructed on that road.

Eastwick, Updike says, was “a fun hick place” that had become “homogenized, all smoothed out.”

Wickford merchants don’t dispute the emergence of big-box stores. “They’re not here in the village,” says Nicole Reilly, owner of American Bay Outfitters, a T-shirt shop. “But they’re just down the street.”

While some business may have declined in Wickford, its essential character, its charm, remains. However, Updike, for the sake of his story, imagines it differently.

“The merchants of Eastwick yearned to make it a tourist trap, and several shops along Dock Street stocked aromatic candles.”

The Grateful Heart book store in Wickford happens to have aromatic candles. And it also has someone who has read The Widows of Eastwick, Jennifer Wheeler, who co-owns the New Age shop with her mother Katherine Wheeler.

“It’s fun to read a book with the perspective that it’s from this area,” Jennifer says.

Wickford isn’t fancy, Katherine says, it’s quaint. And she wouldn’t mind people wanting to see for themselves after reading the book.

“Anything that brings recognition and attention to our village is welcome. We’re business people.”

Melissa Fischer is in the business of selling books at The Book Garden in Wickford, although her sales are of secondhand books, so she isn’t selling The Widows of Wickford, which she notes has not been well publicized. Fischer has begun reading the book, and found herself in elite company.

“I thought people would be curious to see what has happened with the three witches and the village. But nobody’s that enthusiastic.”

brourke@projo.com