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Title: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
Details: Copyright 2020, Hachette Book Group
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): ""I AM TERRIFIED AND I AM TERRIBLE. I AM FEARFUL AND I AM SOMETHING TO BE FEARED."
In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters-- James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna-- join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witches' movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces that will not suffer a witch to vote-- and perhaps not even to live-- the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS WITCHES. BUT THERE WILL BE.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES IS A POWERFUL TALE OF DEFIANCE, SISTERHOOD, AND THE RIGHT TO VOTE."
Why I Wanted to Read It: 2021 was a big year for Witch books of all sorts. 2022 was no different.
How I Liked It: A beautiful mess! That's not a compliment... or is it? And what exactly is a "beautiful mess"? We'll get there.
But in the meantime, meet the Eastwood sisters, or more importantly, the time in which they inhabit. It's 1893, but it's not our 1893, at least, not entirely.
Witches, primarily powerful women in control of great magic, once existed. The three last of them, the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, were stamped out centuries before. Throughout history, people have tried to bring witchcraft back and simultaneously drive it away. Turns out that the Salem Witch Trials involved actual witches after all who fought back against misogyny (and racism, one assumes) and standards of the time to live powerfully until a battle for Salem burned the city to the ground and New Salem is where the bulk of our action takes place. All the magic that's left is hidden and/or extremely simple (little spells for housekeeping, what say).
Three estranged sisters, whose backstories come to the reader in bits and snatches, are slowly revealed. The youngest, Juniper James, is angrily storming through town from the country, when she literally bumps into her two older sisters, of all people, whom she feels abandoned her in their rural home with their abusive father. Their mother died in childbirth with Juniper (although it's heavily suggested their father had a hand in it or at least was negligent enough to purposely let her die) and they were raised in part by their maternal grandmother. Now their father is dead (Juniper killed him in what sounds pretty much like self defense) and the sisters are abruptly reunited. But the truth of the matter is, older sister Agnes, currently pregnant and unmarried and thrown out by their father for getting pregnant before (a pregnancy she terminated), and Beatrice Belladonna, a lesbian librarian sent to a hideous and traumatic school after being caught with a preacher's daughter whom their father tricked Agnes into telling him about, are both estranged from each other as well. Suddenly flung together, the sisters warily and nervously navigate one another.
Turns out the right to vote is still a thing in the Eastwoods' universe and Juniper wants to join the suffrage movement. Beatrice is nervous about the prospect and would rather be in her library, researching about old "witch tales." She's doggedly pursued by an attractive Black reporter with some secret ties and plenty of secrets of her own, Cleo Quinn. But eventually all of the sisters find their way to the suffrage movement, and reject and are rejected by the mainstream version of it for practicing witchcraft. They start their own group and start agitating in secret for members and slowly start performing spells and gaining attention.
The Eastwood sisters and their group, the Sisters of Avalon, gain power and the attention of the corrupt, demonic mayoral candidate (and eventual mayor) who wants to stamp out witchcraft and other progressive causes. A horrific battle ensues, but not before two of the sisters find love interests and eventually all three are arrested. Alliances are formed and broken and secrets come to light.
The great battle means the death of one of the major protagonists, but only in part. The book ends with one of the sisters deciding to tell their story, to commit their history to the magic of words. The book intersperses the story of the Eastwood sisters with fairytale retellings and alterations of nursery rhymes and folk spells.
Before I dive into the book, I feel a quick history lesson is appropriate.
I've mentioned before that since the various world events of 2016 (especially the 2016 US Presidential election), Witches (real ones, but also the fictional kind) are having a moment. We're still having a moment. The wave structure of feminism is inherently exclusionary and priorities the most privileged (feminism in the United States didn't start with rich white het cis women in the 1800s), but as a structure purely for organizational purposes, it's likely the 2016 election and what followed could be said to have started a fourth wave or at least a new realization of the necessity of feminism.
So given that this book was published in 2020 and has clear references to the present day (and we'll get to those) despite being set in a fantasy version of 1893, it's going to be affected by that consciousness.
Something else relevant to this book! I don't want to try to condense thousands of years of human history into a paragraph, but I feel it's important to at least talk a bit about the history of Witchcraft.
The ancient Pagan religions had more of an influence on certain aspects of society more than is even now still given credit (ever wonder why you put candles on a birthday cake? Or even the origins of Halloween, Easter, Christmas, countless other holidays?) so they were never stamped out completely. When they underwent a revival in the early 20th century, just how much was authentically ancient and just how much was a modern addition is still a matter of debate today. But the idea that at least some of the old ways could persist for thousands of years obviously influenced this story, even if the witches therein are of the fantasy variety (and thus will be referred to with a lowercase W, rather than an uppercase W).
I've mentioned before about the rising trend of fantasy authors making fantasy witchcraft look a lot more like the real thing in the past twenty-five years or so as Witchcraft has become more widely known in public consciousness. You read a book about it when you were in college, you know someone who was "into it" years ago, your sister-in-law practices that stuff, et cetera (incidentally, when you meet a Witch, you truly do not have to volunteer any of that, seriously. Please. Please don't. Same goes for telling us how you used to be "into it" at one point). This isn't just showing up in books and movies for adults, even children's fantasy movies like the recent sequel to Hocus Pocus decided to have elements of the real thing.
As a Witch myself, I obviously have a lot of mixed feelings about that (my religious and spiritual beliefs aren't a grab bag for lazy writers who aren't going to give the subject the respect it deserves) and given the rise of certain beliefs on the Right, media that portrays witches as, say, evil child-eaters really shouldn't have any resemblance to the real thing anyway, thanks.
So where does that leave this particular book?
Well, while the witchcraft is fantasy, obviously it has ties to the real thing, not least of which being the fact the Last Three witches (the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone) embody Goddess archetypes that are also tied to the stages of the moon in Witchcraft. Also, some of the book's thoughts on magic hit pretty close the real thing as well.
She turns back to the title page: The Tale of Saint George and the Witches. Mama Mags’s version was nothing like the Grimms’, all neat and cheery. The way she told it the Last Three had not flown to Avalon in terror, but in a desperate attempt to save the last remnants of their power from the purge. They’d built something— some great construct of stone and time and magic— that preserved the wicked heart
of women’s magic like seeds saved after the winnowing. (pg 44)
She tells Miss Quinn about wayward sisters and maiden’s blood and her theory that secrets might have survived somehow in old wives’ tales and children’s rhymes. “It must sound ridiculous.”
Miss Quinn lifts one shoulder. “Not to me. Sometimes a thing is too dangerous to be written down or said straight
out. Sometimes you have to slip it in slantwise, half-hidden.” (pg 73)
“Anyway. What my mother taught me is this: you hide the most important things in the places that matter least. Women’s clothes, children’s toys, songs... Places a man would never look.” As she speaks
she is levering open one of the glass cases, running long fingers over the hinges of a woman’s sewing box. “If the witches of Old Salem had the spell to restore the Way, do you really believe they would have advertised it? Left it listed in the index of a grimoire?” She shakes her head, abandoning the sewing box for the child’s sampler hanging
on the wall, yellowed and stained. “You’re thinking like a librarian, rather than a witch. Ah! Come see.” (pg 241)
Mags always said the solstices and equinoxes were the times magic burned closest to the surface of things, when any self-respecting hedge-witch or wild-hearted woman ought to be outdoors, with moon
light on her skin and night around her shoulders. (pg 268)
(Quick note! Solstices and Equinoxes along with cross-quarter days help make up the Wheel of the Year, observed in some form by most if not all modern day Witches and Pagans. The Sabbats are said to have special energy.)
Bella resettles her spectacles. “But the spell to call back the Lost Way of Avalon. It required a maiden, a mother, and a crone, did it not?”
The Crone shrugs. “Every woman is usually at least one of those. Sometimes all three and a few others besides.”
Bella blinks several times. “So we weren’t called, then. Or— chosen.” Juniper figures she’s remembering the thing
that drew them together that day, the tugging of the line between them.
The Crone makes a sound that can only be described as a cackle. She catches her breath, tries to answer, then breaks into another fit of cackles. “Chosen? If you three were chosen, it was by circumstance. By your own need. That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.” (pg 404)
Incidentally, "hitting close to the real thing" is something that occurs throughout the book. Real life historical figures and real life events mingle with real ones.
“Even if I pieced together the spell, I doubt any of us has enough witch-blood to work it. All the true witches were burned centuries ago.”
“All of them, Miss Eastwood?” There’s a hint of pity in Quinn’s voice. “How, then, did Cairo manage to repel the Ottomans and the redcoats both for decades, despite all their rifles and ships? Why did Andrew Jackson leave
those Choctaw in Mississippi? Out of the goodness of his black little heart?” The pity sharpens, turns scathing.
“Do you really think the slavers found every witch aboard their ships and tossed her overboard?”
Beatrice has encountered wild theories that there was witchcraft at work in Stono and Haiti, that Turner and Brown
were aided by supernatural means. She’s heard the scintillated whispers about colored covens still prowling the streets. But at St. Hale’s she was taught that such stories were base rumors, the product of ignorance and superstition.
Quinn gentles her tone. “Maybe even good Saint George missed a witch or two during the purge. How do you think
your grandmother came to know those words in the first place?” (pgs 73 and 74)
As Mr. Lee fumbles through answers that are mostly long pauses and pained expressions, Juniper sits on his other side, mangling the words at the top of her voice and complaining when they produce no obvious results (“Some good men’s magic is. What’s Latin for horseshit, Mr. Lee?”). It’s clear that whatever work Mr. Lee did in Chicago— Annie said he was a lineman who became one of Debs’s left-hand boys,
charged with arson and inciting to riot by the state of Illinois— it hadn’t prepared him for two hours with the Eastwood sisters. (pg 173 and 174)
(That'd be Eugene V. Debs.)
Lee slaps a hand on the table, his charm hanging in ragged tatters around him. "Listen. This exact spell took out a mile of track in Chicago and got me beaten damn near to death. When you’re
out on the front lines—”
Agnes thinks he might be warming up to a real speech, full of aggrieved passion and chest-thumping, when one of the other girls at the table gives a soft, devastating snort. “You wouldn’t know a front line if it bit you, boy.” It’s Gertrude Bonnin, the clay-colored woman from one of the Dakotas.
Mr. Lee looks at her, not so much offended as despairing, and Juniper slings an arm around Gertrude’s stiff shoulders. “Our girl here fought in the Indian Wars out west, Mister Lee. She and a bunch of other girls busted out
of their boarding school— using Saints only know what kind of witching, because she won’t tell us— and joined their mamas and aunties on the front lines.”
Gertrude pats Juniper’s arm and says, without a trace of apology, “Not every word and way belongs to you.”
“What about the uplift of women around the globe? What about the universal union of our sex, and the comradeship
of womankind?” Agnes is fairly sure Juniper’s store of three-syllable words has just been exhausted; she suspects
her sister is quoting from a pamphlet they received from the Witches’ Franchise League in Wales. It was accompanied
by a substantial donation to their cause from a Miss Pankhurst and an invitation to the summer solstice ritual at Stonehenge.
Gertrude gives another of her devastating snorts. “When I see you out west, standing beside us against the U.S.
cavalry, I’ll consider us comrades.” (pgs 174 and 175)
Something in Beatrice’s face— the numb creep of betrayal— compels him to add, even more gently, “I have not told a soul and do not intend to. My ancestors broke with the Church after they witnessed
the atrocities of the first purge. My own grandmother harbored witches who fled from Old Salem and slaves who fled from the Old South. My mother would return from the grave to haunt me forevermore if I did not at least offer you my assistance now, such as it is.” (pg 221)
Obligatory note about putting real life historical oppression that actually happened (such as escaping slaves) alongside fictional fantasy oppression is understandably somewhat controversial. It quickly communicates to an audience the gravity of your fictional oppression (and given that the public school system in the United States is currently worse than ever with historical whitewashing of oppression, this might count as educational) but at the same time, what are the ethics of doing that to real life victims? It can be complicated.
Interestingly, some historical changes were made.
Salem as I said is a history unto itself:
Juniper figures he means Old Salem, the city taken by witches and devils in the seventeen-whatevers. It’s a scorched ruin, now, good for nothing but ghost stories. (pg 79)
Old Salem, where witching rose again in the New World, despite centuries of shackles
and stakes. Where Tituba and Osborne and Good and the rest of them had worked their wonders and terrors, walking
the streets with black beasts at their heels. Where men feared to tread and women feared nothing at all. (pg 155)
But the sort of sideways history (and little changes) appear elsewhere.
Later that evening Agnes walks past the black remains of the Square Shirtwaist
Factory on St. Lamentation. She read in the papers that forty-six women died in the fire, and another thirteen
leapt from the high windows. “It’s company policy to lock the doors,” the owner argued in court. “So the girls don’t get shiftless.” He and his partner had paid a fine of seventy-five dollars.
Standing there, looking up at the burned carcass of the factory with heat gathering in her fingertips, Agnes
notices that there are survey stakes spaced neatly around the lot. Scraped earth. The beginnings of a scaffold.
She understands that the factory will be rebuilt, locked doors and all— that the sisters and cousins and mothers
of the dead girls will work atop their ashes —and she knows, then, what their second spectacle will be. (pg 161)
Remember what I said about the sometimes complicated ethics of using real life victims of oppression? I'm assuming the Square Shirtwaist Factory is as close as the author chose to touch on the real life victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
“W-why is it called the Deeps?” she asks, as Quinn pauses to scrawl some complicated sign on the tunnel wall.
“Because it’s waist-deep down there. At least after a bad rain.”
Beatrice makes a sound somewhere between a whimper and a question mark, and Quinn clarifies. “They built the prison
on the riverbank, where the land was soft and boggy— there’s a reason none of our tunnels lead to the east bank— and it sinks an inch or two every year. The lowest cells always have standing water in them. There’s no way to get dry or clean. I knew a man arrested for loitering who came out with his feet dead white, just rotting away in his boots...” Quinn’s voice trails into the tunnel-dark. (pg 204 and 205)
I'm assuming this is a reference to the Tombs, the notorious late 19th century NYC sinking prison.
Bella presses her hand to her skirt pocket, where Juniper can see the square shape of her little black notebook. “I found the words written in the Sisters Grimm, half-faded...”
“The Grimms were clever girls,” says the Mother, fondly. “Jacobine and Willa called the tower and roused us from
our sleep long after Old Salem, but they weren’t interested in powerful words or ways— perhaps they knew the trouble it would bring, by then. They just wanted our stories. Made a nice profit for themselves, I heard.” (pg 411)
I don't know why exactly, but I really like the twist of the Brothers Grimm being instead the Sisters Grimm.
“Weren’t you two supposed to be lying low at the Everly Club?” Miss Pearl had provided Agnes with the name and address of a madam sympathetic to the cause of witches and working-women, who was willing to trade certain words and ways and hard-to-come-by herbs in exchange for safe harbor.
August shrugs. “Inquisitors showed up asking questions, looking for trouble.” (pg 503)
That'd be a nod to the Everleigh Club.
But really, the book has the most to say about feminism and activism and the need for both, and the intricacies and complexities therein:
A woman in a white wig is speechifying about women’s rights and women’s votes
and women’s history, about taking on the mantles of their fore-mothers and marching forward arm in arm.
And Saints save her, Agnes wishes it was real. That she could just wave a sign or shout a slogan and step into a better world, one where she could be more than a daughter or a mother or a wife. Where she could be something
instead of nothing.
Don’t forget what you are.
But Agnes hasn’t believed in witch-tales since she was a little girl. (pgs 15 and 16)
She stabs a finger at the paper. "Listen, Miss West: you are welcome to assist the Association in our mission. Saints know we need every warm body we can get. But you will have to abandon your pursuit of this, this” —she taps the article— “devilry. Am I understood?”
Juniper looks at her— this little old woman with a powdered wig and a big office on the fancy side of town— and
understands perfectly well. She understands that the Women’s Association wants one kind of power— the kind you can wear in public or argue in the courtroom or write on a slip of paper and drop in a ballot box— and that Juniper
wants another. The kind that cuts, the kind with sharp teeth and talons, the kind that starts fires and dances merry around the blaze.
And she understands that if she intends to pursue it, she’ll have to do it on her own. “Yes, ma’am,” she says,
and hears three sighs of relief around her. (pg 55)
Beatrice catches a laugh before it escapes and stuffs it back down her throat. “Perhaps you ought to join, then.”
She can tell by the flattening of Miss Quinn’s smile that it’s the wrong thing to say, and Beatrice knows why. She’s overheard enough talk at the library and read enough editorials in The Ladies’ Tribune to understand
that the New Salem Women’s Association is divided on the question of the color-line. Some worry that the inclusion
of colored women might tarnish their respectable reputation; others feel they ought to spend a few more decades
being grateful for their freedom before they agitate for anything so radical as rights. Most of them agree it would
be far more convenient if colored women remained in the Colored Women’s League.
Beatrice herself suspects that two separate-but-equal organizations are far less effective than a single united one, and that their daddy was as wrong about freedmen needing to go back to Africa as he was about women minding
their place— but she’s never worried overmuch about it. She feels an uncomfortable twist of shame in her belly. (pgs 59 and 60)
I appreciate the book's attempts to call out the fact what we now might consider "First Wave Feminism" (for which women's suffrage was a signature issue) had a particularly bad white supremacy problem (please don't get me started on Susan B Anthony).
But Agnes hasn’t come to have her fortune told or her palms read.
“Pennyroyal, please,” she says, and it’s enough.
Madame Zina gives her a weighing look, as though checking to see whether Agnes knows what she’s asked for and why, then unlocks a cupboard and tucks a few dried sprigs into a brown paper sack.
“Steep the pennyroyal in river-water— boil it good, mind— and stir it seven times with a silver spoon. The words
cost extra.” Madame Zina’s eyes linger on the eggshell swell of Agnes’s belly. She’s barely showing, but only women
in a particular state come to visit Zina’s shop asking for pennyroyal.
Agnes shakes her head once. “I already have them.” Mags told them to her when she was sixteen. She hasn’t forgotten.
Madame Zina nods amiably and hands her the brown paper sack sealed with wax. Concern crimps her black brows. “No need to look so glum, girl. I don’t know what your man or your god has told you, but there’s no sin to it. It’s just the way of the world, older than the Three themselves. Not every woman wants a child.” (pgs 62 and 63)
Abortion and reproductive rights come up a lot in the book.
Guilt crosses Juniper’s face, a foreign expression, but she banishes it with a little shake of her head. “Well. I hope at least we can all agree.”
Miss Stone— who has until now been standing perfectly still— clears her throat to ask, “On what, exactly?”
Juniper apparently doesn’t hear the tension lurking in Miss Stone’s voice like an unsprung trap. She meets her eyes squarely. “That we aren’t going to get a damn thing by asking nice and minding our manners. That we need to make
use of every weapon we have, or they’ll beat us bloody in the streets.” Juniper leans forward, that swaggering
smile returning. “That it’s time for the women’s movement to become the witches’ movement.”
The silence following this statement is so profound that Beatrice imagines she can hear the veins pulsing in Miss Stone’s temples.
Juniper speaks into the quiet, heedless. “It was witching that saved me in the street yesterday, and it’s witching
that will win us the vote. More than just the vote— back in the old days women were queens and scholars and
generals! We could have all that back again. My sister— Bella, I mean; this is Agnes, our other sister”— a look of genuine horror crosses Miss Stone’s face as she contemplates the prospect of another Eastwood— “anyway, Bella has been doing some research about that tower we saw on the equinox. I think it’s...” Juniper’s eyes cross Bella’s, and Bella knows that Juniper has guessed what the tower is, what the sign of three circles must mean. “I think it’s important. That it might bring witching back to the world.”
Juniper looks around at the stone-still women. “What do you say?” (pg 120)
I also really appreciate the ongoing topic throughout the book of how respectable your activism has to be, and the right way and wrong way (and right power and wrong power) and tone argument versus righteous anger and action.
“How many children do you have, ma’am?”
She puffs out her chest. “Six daughters, all healthy, all hard workers.”
“And your daughters. They’re safe, you think?”
The frozen eyes narrow. Agnes presses. “They’ll grow without knowing hunger or want or a man’s hand raised against them? They won’t go blind in the mill or lose their fingers packing meat?”
Now the woman’s shoulders are straining against the seams of her blouse, her face reddening. “Well, they will not get themselves”— she says a long, chilly word that sounds like it must be Russian for knocked up— “without a husband, that’s for damn—”
Agnes cuts her off. “And their husbands will treat them kindly? They won’t lose their paychecks in barrooms or gambling halls, they won’t die young, they won’t beat their wives for back-talk or a burned dinner?” Agnes knows she’s going too far, saying too much, but she can’t seem to stop. “And if they do, will your daughters keep their own daughters safe?” Her voice cracks and bleeds like a split lip. If their mother had been a true witch instead
of merely a woman, would she have saved her daughters from the man she married? Would she at least have lived?
Agnes swallows hard into the silence. She can feel glances winging past her. “It’s a risk just to be a woman, in my experience. No matter how healthy or hardworking she is.” A great weariness washes over her as she says it, a grim bone-tiredness that makes her want to walk away and keep walking, until she finds someplace soft and green and safe to have her child. But no such place exists. A voice very like Juniper’s whispers, Yet, in her
ear. None of the women answer her. (pgs 140 and 141)
Beatrice and her sisters chose nine o’clock in the evening because nine o’clock is a woman’s hour. The dinners have been served and the dishes dried and stacked, the children tucked into bed, the whiskies poured and served to the husbands. It’s the hour where a woman might sit in stillness,scheming and dreaming.
But on the seventeenth of May, some of them are doing more than dreaming. (pg 141)
Juniper squares her shoulders and turns back to the room full of waiting women.
“Welcome,” she begins, her voice clear and bright, “to the first meeting of the Sisters of Avalon.”
Juniper introduces Beatrice and Agnes and Jennie. She thanks the gathered women for answering the advertisement
and reads their mission statement from a creased page held in her hand, stumbling a little, sounding like a schoolgirl reading from the Bible.
She folds the paper and fixes them with a green-lit gaze. “That’s why we’re here.” Her voice is steady now. “How
about you all tell me why you’re here?”
A nervous silence follows. It lingers, escalating toward the unbearable, until a flat voice calls from the back,
“My brother gets fifty cents a day at the mill. I get a quarter for the same damn work.”
“The courts took my son,” hisses someone else. “Said he belonged to his father, by law.”
Miss Pearl offers, “They arrested two of my girls on immorality, and not a one of their customers.” The end of her sentence is lost in the sudden flood of complaints: bank loans they can’t receive and schools they can’t attend;
husbands they can’t divorce and votes they can’t take and positions they can’t hold.
Juniper holds up a hand. “You’re here because you want more for yourselves, better for your daughters. Because
it’s easy to ignore a woman.” Juniper’s lips twist in a feral smile. “But a hell of a lot harder to ignore a witch.”
The word witch cracks like lightning over the room. Another silence follows, tense and electric.
A voice cuts through the hush, hard and foreign-sounding. “There’s no such thing as witches. Not anymore.” It’s the big Russian woman from Agnes’s mill, arms crossed like a pair of pistols across her breast.
“No,” Juniper parries. “But there will be.”(pg 145)
“There are witches walking among us once more. They caught the ringleader early this morning— some madwoman from down south, I heard— but some of them still roam free.” Malton waves a creased page of
newsprint in the air. Agnes does not permit her eyes to follow it. She can feel the soft heat of Bella somewhere
to the north, but nothing but a cold absence where Juniper should be.
Malton wheels, fixing them with his red-veined stare. “And I have it on good authority that some of them might
even be standing right in front of me, posing as good honest working-women in order to seduce others to their cause.”
Agnes does not flinch, does not breathe. What authority?
“So I’m here to offer you girls a warning: if I get so much as a whiff of witching— or unionizing, suffrage, any of that trash— I’ll take it straight to the police, make no mistake.” His eyes rake them, and Agnes catches the wet gleam of fear beneath all his bluster. She wants very badly to make him more afraid. (pg 210)
Mr. Blackwell nods genially at his own knuckles. “As a man of God I disapprove, but as a mere man, well... I wonder sometimes where the first witch came from. If perhaps Adam deserved Eve’s curse.” His smile twists. “If behind every witch is a woman wronged.” (pg 221 and 222)
“You girls have done very well.” Juniper wants to write the word girls on a ribbon and strangle him with it. (pg 228)
That longing look is back in Wiggin’s eyes, stronger now. “My mother used to make
my dolls dance, when I was a girl. I begged her to teach the words to me and she did, and more besides. I liked to learn them. It made me feel— ” She doesn’t say how it made her feel, but Agnes knows: like her voice had power, like her will had weight.
“What happened to her?”
Bitterness seeps into Wiggin’s face, aging it. “She was caught killing the unborn.” Agnes thinks of Mags and the narrow path back to her house, Madame Zina with her gauzy veils and fake card-readings. “They made me go to the hanging. I was a Lost Angel, after that.” (pgs 268 and 269)
He jerks so violently he falls backward into the chair. Agnes thinks how quickly she might grow used to men flinching rather than flirting. (pg 299)
Sometimes the problem is Miss Cleo Quinn; it turns out even the suffragists who seem
sympathetic with the cause of colored women balk at the thought of welcoming one into their actual homes. (pg 357)
“I am a witch.” Agnes shouts it a second time, louder, flinging her voice into the night. “And so are my sisters, and so will be my daughter and my daughter’s daughter.” Her voice roughens at the mention of Eve, as if the collar around her throat has constricted.
Behind them comes the sound of footsteps, then the whisper of words and the sizzle of saltwater spat on hot iron.
Their chains crackle with unnatural rust. Their collars boil at the touch of witchcraft.
Bella bites her cheek until she tastes blood, but Agnes doesn’t seem to feel her collar at all. Her head is tilted
back against the stake, her eyes closed, her voice strong. “And so is every woman who says what she shouldn’t or wants what she can’t have, who fights for her fair share.” (pgs 466 and 467)
But how does all of that translate to the actual book as in reading and enjoying though?
Well, although the author's world-building is frequently a bit frenetic and exhausting, that aspect of it is pretty fascinating, what she chose to keep and what she chose to revise. Slavery and Jim Crow still exist, as does the slaughter, forced assimilation, and other oppression of Native peoples. Homophobia, transphobia, and certainly misogyny still exist.
But the skepticism that arose with the cultural revolution seems to be non-existent in this fantasy world in order for the witch angle to work, as "witch" in the book is treated the same as lesbian, feminist, sex-worker, and abortionist. It's one of those tricky aspects of world-building like this, sort of like trying to make French toast in a world where France doesn't exist.
As far as everything else? The author throws a lot at us right away and explanations take a while to get there. If we don't know who these people are and what the stakes are, it's hard to frantically follow nonstop action, especially when it's for multiple characters and the backstory doesn't so much as enlighten as it does pelt. Several cutting events don't quite have the heft and meaning they should because we haven't spent enough time with the characters and been able to get enough inside their heads to appreciate them. Some villains' tragic backstories do explain some things, but usually after they've been inflated to almost cartoon levels. There's so much going on, all at once, nonstop, you have nothing to do but go along with it (or try).
But in a way, that's part of the beauty of this book. It carries you with it (or doesn't, if you give up, I suppose) and puts you under its spell, of its worldbuilding and characters and chaos and style. Anachronisms abound and they're pretty much supposed to (thus why I'm not going to try to judge this book by any kind of historical accuracy, in addition to the fact it's alternate history and fantasy) although it can occasionally grate and throw you out of a scene. But the book's relentless madcap pace is again, part of its charm.
I don't think the author was as successful with the attempt to tie the women's suffrage movement to the Salem Witch Trials as she might have been, but honestly with so much else going on in the book, it somewhat becomes buried anyway.
What is a beautiful mess? You can find flaws, sure, plenty of them. But in the end you can't deny the overall profoundly dazzling effect.
Notable:
Mr. Gideon Hill left us with this sobering reflection: “I fear we have only ourselves to blame: in tolerating the unnatural demands of the suffragists, have we not also harbored their unnatural magics? The people deserve a mayor who will protect them from harm— and there is no harm greater than the return of witching.”
Indeed. And Mr. Hill— an up-and-coming member of the City Council and third-party candidate for New Salem
mayor— might be just the man for the job. (pg 56)
The mayor and his rise to power is truly frightening in a way where it might have been simply cartoonish.
Worthington is leaning over the podium and sweating in a manner that suggests his speech must be drawing to its merciful end. “I say to you now: let us put aside our petty grievances and differences, and celebrate instead what unites us. Let us enjoy the Fair!” The mayor makes a gesture to the brass band perspiring silently behind the stage. (pg 88)
This is an impressive rewording of the middleground fallacy angle certain politicians (particularly in the Democratic party) have taken in light of the 2016 Presidential election.
And what happens in November, if he’s elected? What happens when he has more than just angry mobs and shadows?” (pgs 345 and 346)
Almost, Juniper begins to believe it will be all right. That the women of the city will stand strong against mobs and shadows, that Gideon Hill will lose his election in November and slink back under whatever rock he came from. But their stores of witch-ways are running thin, and every midwife and herbalist has been driven out of town. The sickness is worsening, too— even The Post now calls it the Second Plague—and panic worsens with it. The shadows coil thicker and darker, like fattened flies, and Gideon Hill’s face smiles
down from every window and wall.
Our light against the darkness. (pg 356)
“Was it close, at least?” Bella whispers. “Will there be a recount?”
Cleo slumps into an empty couch. “The Post headline this morning refers to it as a ‘landslide,’ I believe. The Defender prefers the term ‘catastrophe.’” (pg 368)
Maybe it's just the author touching on a recent global disaster, but it deftly gave me the intended slow, sick horror feeling.
Agnes hasn’t blinked or flinched. She remains stone-faced, implacable. “Yet he’s still scared. What is he afraid of?”
“Same thing every powerful man is afraid of.” The Crone shrugs. “The day the truth comes out.”
“The day he gets what’s coming,” says the Maiden.
The Mother meets Agnes’s eyes and Juniper sees something pass between them, the gleam of a tossed blade. “Us.”(pg 413)
And— were they paying again? I’m more careful these days. Juniper thinks of Eve’s labored breathing, the endless rows of cots at Charity Hospital, the fever that raged through the city’s tenements and row houses and dim alleys, preying on the poor and brown and foreign— the expendable. Oh, you bastard. (pg 455)
A plague crawls through the city and this book was published in October 2020 so either the author was taking a very astute guess or is psychic or more likely, knows that the Coronavirus is absolutely not the first time a pandemic was weaponized for fear, hate, and deliberate misinformation.
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Things always come in sevens in witch-tales (swans, dwarves, days to create the world), so Juniper figures they’ll do fine. (pg 86)
Something about putting a Bible story with two well known fairytales is an interesting choice.
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The book is obviously feminist and highlights the mistreatment of women and it also makes the interesting (and much needed) choice to examine and even excoriate the gender binary. "Men's magic" and "women's magic" are just ways for even the educate to fall into its trap.
He shakes his head ruefully. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Annie said you were a hell of a looker” —Agnes feels a sudden rush of warmth toward Annie— “and hard as a coffin nail” —the warmth subsides
substantially— “which is frankly more interesting. I sympathize with your cause, truly I do. There were women
standing on the train tracks in Chicago, too, and we were grateful. But it comes down to the laws of nature.”
“What laws, precisely?” There’s no honey in her voice at all, now.
Lee takes another drink, thumbs foam from his upper lip. “Women can’t work men’s magic.”
Agnes feels invisible thunderclouds rolling nearer. “No?”
“It’s no insult. It’s just the way we’re made. A man would make a mess of women’s witching, wouldn’t he? All those
fiddly charms for housework and keeping your hair just so...”
The thunderclouds crackle closer, raising the hair on her arms. “Have you ever tried it?”
He looks mildly affronted, as if she’d asked whether he sometimes wore corsets and lace. “Of course not.”
“Give me a man’s spell to try, then, right here and now.”
Her tone cuts through the indulgent laze of Mr. Lee’s expression. He sits a little straighter in his seat, his eyes on the iron line of her mouth. “Does your father know where you are?”
She gives him a cold shrug. “Dead.”
“Your husband?”
Agnes raises her left hand and wiggles her ringless fingers.
“Huh. What about the baby, then? Are you sure a woman in your condition should be—”
Agnes lowers all her fingers except one, causing Mr. Lee to snort into his beer. (pg 166 and 167)
(For the record, a mild spoiler: Agnes not only performs it, she knocks it out of the park and knocks his socks off.)
“But— how could a man work witchcraft?” Bella interrupts. The Maiden laughs at her. “You think magic cares what’s between your legs? Or how you do your hair?” Bella does not interrupt again. (pg 406)
“You don’t have to come, you know.” Juniper doesn’t mean it to come out so hard.
She starts again. “I only mean...” But she doesn’t know how to say what she means. That Jennie doesn’t have to keep
following her deeper and deeper into trouble, like that Italian witch who walked through nine circles of Hell; that she is the first friend Juniper made in her life, and the thought of her harmed on their behalf takes all the air from Juniper’s lungs.
Instead, she says, “I only mean this isn’t your fight. You’re not like us. You have a home to run to— a rich daddy, a place to weather the storm—”
“I really don’t.” Jennie’s smile is brief and bitter.
“Why’s that?”
“Because.” Jennie pauses here for so long that Juniper doesn’t think she intends to go on. Then she heaves a hard sigh and meets Juniper’s eyes. “Because my father and mother are adamant in their belief that they raised a son, instead of a daughter.” She lets the statement stand for a moment before adding, gently, “I never had a brother, Juniper.”
Juniper feels her head tilting. “But why— oh.” Oh. She feels simultaneously very stupid, mildly aggrieved, baffled, curious, and shocked. She recalls the delight on Jennie’s face the first time she worked women’s witching and the silent clench of her jaw when they accused her of men’s magic, the entire summer she spent shoulder-to-shoulder with Sisters she couldn’t quite trust with her secret. Juniper adds shame to her list.
Before she can express any of these things, Jennie lifts her chestnut wig from her head. Beneath it Juniper sees her cornsilk-colored hair has been cut brutally short. It stands in shocked tufts, as if refusing to take such abuse quietly. “When I was arrested they threw me in the men’s workhouse, burned my skirts, and did this.” She gestures to her hair. Juniper imagines shadowy figures holding her down, the silver gleam of shears, soft coils of
cornsilk drifting to the prison floor. And then Juniper doesn’t feel anything except sorry, and mad as hell.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Inez.” Jennie says her name with such care that Juniper thinks there are one or two other things she didn’t know
about Jennie Lind. “And Miss Cady Stone, of course.”
“That old—”
“Yes. She knew my father. She hired me as a secretary for the Women’s Association after he turned me out. She’s not... She’s better than you think she is.”
There’s a brief silence, while Juniper works to revise another half-dozen or so of her assumptions. “Jennie, I—”
“This fight.” Jennie rubs the broken bridge of her nose. “To just— live, to be— is one that I was signed up for before I was even born. I don’t get to walk away.”
Her eyes flick up to Juniper’s and away. “And they have Inez.” Another pause. “Who I love.”
Juniper stops her pacing after that. She sits at the other end of the polished dining table, staff across her knees, thinking about bindings and blood and the sideways logic of love: all for one and one for all, a dead-even trade that adds up to infinity. She thinks how upside-down it is that she started this fight out of rage—spite and fury and sour hate— and that she’ll finish it for something else entirely.
It’s full dusk by the time it appears, folding out of darkness: a black owl with burning eyes that speaks in her sister’s voice.
“It’s time.” (pgs 432, 433, and 434)
And just like that, putting a trans woman in a historical novel (which is accurate since trans people have always existed) isn't so hard after all and actually is a perfect fit for a story about the marginalized working together and rising up.
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Bella gives the illustration an aggressive tap. “Why were witches sentenced to burning, anyway? Why not hanging or beheading or stoning?” Back in Miss Hurston’s one-room schoolhouse Juniper
was taught that witches were burned to remind folks of the hellfire that awaited them in the next life, but Juniper supposes Miss Hurston also believed that bad behavior could be cured by prayer and regular thwacks with her yardstick, so perhaps her information was flawed.
Her sister leans closer, eyes bird-bright behind her spectacles. “What if they didn’t start as witch-burnings? What
if they were book-burnings, in the beginning?”
Juniper shrugs. “I guess.” (pg 277)
I freely admit to the whole "witch-burning" getting on my historical nerves in other contexts because it's usually not historically accurate (no people accused of witchcraft were burned in England or any of its colonies, including Salem), but this is a fantasy/alternate history novel and that "hellfire" reason is a good explanation, as is linking it to censorship.
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That evening, just as dusk purples toward night and the first stars open like white eyes above them, Juniper opens the tower door. Her pockets bristle with witch-ways and her cloak drapes dark and long behind her. She hardly seems to feel the wounds and bruises still mottling her flesh. (pg 281)
She’s surprised to feel a pang of pity for them: they thought they were in the kind of story where the wicked witches were caught and burned at the end, where all the little children were tucked
safely into bed with the smell of smoke in their hair. It must be upsetting to discover themselves in the kind of story where the witches make friends with the flames instead, where they snap their chains and laugh up at the stars with sharp teeth. (pg 467)
The author frequently has a way with words that carries some of her other weaknesses.
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On the sixth page of that newspaper, in the section generally reserved for advertisements selling pomades and tobacco and Madame CJ Walker’s Wonderful Scalp Ointment, there was a half-page
of solid black ink. In large white capitals are the words:WITCHES OF THE WORLD
UNITE!
The text below invites women of all ages and backgrounds to join the Sisters of Avalon, a newly formed suffrage society dedicated to the restoration of women’s rights and powers. Interested parties are instructed to prick their fingers and smear the blood across the advertisement while chanting the provided words, which would— if the blood
belongs to a woman, and if that woman bears the Sisters no ill intent— reveal a time and location. (pgs 138 and 139)
If you asked me for one passage from this book that would define it, I'd give you this one: real life historical figures (Madame CJ Walker) in a historical settings (a grand newspaper advertisement), with a twist and a link to both witchcraft and progressive movements ("WITCHES OF THE WORLD UNITE!"), and the author's worldbuilding.
Final Grade: A-
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