The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

To survive, she is cultivating distance.  

In the blink of an eye, almost all the menfolk in a remote coastal settlement are lost to a storm. The women must fend for themselves and some of them turn to ostentatious religion. When a commissioner intent on rooting out witchcraft arrives in their midst, some of them turn on each other literally starting a fire that they cannot control; two of their number are burnt at the stake. The commissioner dies soon after: his wife, who has come to despise him, hits him on the head when he accuses her friend of witchcraft and attacks her. "The rolling pin smacks at the centre of his skull. It sounds like a bird's egg, cracking..."