The Once and Future Witches

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction and Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-16

Part 2, Chapters 17-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-26

Part 3, Chapters 27-35

Parts 4-5, Chapter 36-45 and Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Introduction and Part 1, Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “The Wayward Sisters”

Introduction Summary: “An Introduction”

An unnamed narrator, later implied to be Juniper Eastwood, describes what the world is like at the end of the 19th Century in America. Once, witchcraft was common until it was ruthlessly suppressed. During their childhood, the Eastwood sisters learned spell craft from their grandmother, Mama Mags, who advised that “proper witching […] only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way” (2). Although witches have disappeared from the world by 1893, when the novel takes place, the narrator concludes by declaring that there will be witches in the world again someday.

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The black-haired, high-spirited, 17-year old James Juniper Eastwood flees from law enforcement on the spring equinox of 1893. She steps off a train in New Salem, 200 miles from her rural home in Crow County, where she is wanted for the murder of her father. Limping badly from a leg injury, Juniper spies a wanted poster of herself and tries to hide her features under her cloak. When a policeman becomes suspicious, she casts a confusion spell on him and slips away. Looking for a place to blend in, Juniper heads for a women’s suffrage meeting scheduled for six o’clock in St. George’s Square. After arriving, she half-listens to the speeches when suddenly a dark tower emerges in the midst of the square. People flee in panic. Juniper knows that someone is working powerful witchcraft, but she can’t tell who’s behind the phenomenon.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Agnes Amaranth, the second-eldest and strongest Eastwood sister, is a resident of New Salem, where she toils in a cotton mill and lives in a boarding house.

Agnes has become pregnant but refuses to marry the father of her child, Floyd Matthews. She believes something better awaits her than being a household drudge. After refusing Floyd’s proposal, Agnes wanders uptown until she finds herself in St. George’s Square. She witnesses the eerie apparition of the dark tower and knows someone is working magic. She stands transfixed as spectators flee in a panic.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Beatrice Belladonna “Bella” Eastwood is the eldest and wisest Eastwood sister, and she works in the Salem College library. At her desk, Bella flips through a first edition of the fairy tales of the Sisters Grimm. She comes across a handwritten verse at the end of the book that stirs her memory: “The wayward sisters, hand in hand, Burned and bound, our stolen crown, But what is lost, that can’t be found?” (19). She remembers Mama Mags repeating these lines to her as a child. They are part of a legend called “The Tale of St. George and the Witches.” In the legend, St. George purges the world of witches until only three are left—the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. He corners the three in a tower and sets fire to it, killing the last witches in the world.

The story stirs up unpleasant memories from Bella’s past. Mama Mags taught the Eastwood sisters magic in secret, despite their abusive father. Eventually, Bella and Agnes ran away, leaving Juniper behind. Bella bursts into tears at the memory and walks out of the office. She finds herself whispering the verse about the wayward sisters until it takes on a life of its own. Eventually, she finds herself in St. George’s Square just in time to witness the raising of the tower. She feels dizzy and hears someone calling her by her childhood name of “Bella.”

The story’s viewpoint shifts to Juniper, who is elated at the sight of magic returning to the world. Juniper recognizes her sisters in the midst of the square after everyone else has fled.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Bella faints as Agnes and Juniper run to catch her. When she revives, the three sisters uncertainly greet each other. Agnes says she hasn’t seen Bella for seven years and didn’t even know she lived in New Salem. Juniper is enraged at the other two for abandoning her.

The three sisters take shelter in Agnes’s boarding house rooms. Juniper reveals that Mama Mags died and their father is dead as well, having left their farm to a dim-witted male cousin. The sisters speculate fearfully about the tower apparition, believing that the authorities are sure to persecute whoever is responsible, as witchcraft is illegal.

They try to settle down for the night, but Juniper can’t sleep and begins to tell the tale of the sleeping maiden, a variation of Sleeping Beauty in which a maiden witch casts a sleeping spell on a kingdom so that she can rule it. A prince traps the maiden in a tower and sets fire to it. The grateful king, freed from his sleeping curse, makes the prince his heir.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

The following morning, the three sisters share an uneasy breakfast before going their separate ways. Bella offers Juniper a place to stay until she can get settled in New Salem on her own. Juniper persuades Bella to show her the women’s suffrage headquarters building because Juniper wants to join the movement.

Bella recalls a symbol on the door of the phantom tower just before it disappeared. It was three interwoven circles—the symbol of the Last Three witches of the west who were burned to death by St. George. Thinking of the legendary three sisters, she wonders if magic could be coming back to the world.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

At the end of her workday, Bella escorts Juniper to the suffrage headquarters. The movement’s president, Miss Stone, is appalled when Juniper suggests combining magic with votes for women, as she believes it would ruin the credibility of the movement.

After leaving Juniper at the headquarters, Bella encounters an African American journalist named Cleopatra Quinn, who is interested in hearing Bella’s eyewitness account of the black tower. Bella is panic-stricken at the suggestion and leaves hastily, even though she finds herself secretly attracted to Miss Quinn.

Introduction and Part 1, Chapters 1-6 Analysis

The Once and Future Witches is divided into five parts, and the title of each part corresponds to a line from a children’s rhyme that will summon magic back into the world. The first part is entitled “The Wayward Sisters” and focuses on gathering the lost Eastwood clan back together. The introduction is presented from the first-person viewpoint of an unnamed narrator, though we will later learn that this is Juniper, the youngest of the Eastwood sisters, who ominously foreshadows the return of witchcraft by the end of the novel. After each sister is introduced in her own dedicated chapter (Chapters 1-3), the rest of the novel is told using limited third-person narration, cutting back and forth among the principal characters.

The introduction establishes both a more intimate connection to Juniper, who is the primary protagonist, and helps to define the circumstances of the world of the novel, which combines real events from American history with an imagined history of witchcraft. Because this is an alternative history fantasy story, the book contains many references to real events that occurred during the Gilded Age period of American history. Old Salem is modeled on the real Salem, Massachusetts, and its infamous witch trials of the late 17th Century. Details including the name “New Salem,” the “Sisters Grimm” instead of the historical Brothers Grimm, and the alternate version of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale indicate how Harrow crafts a similar world to reality, but with thematically resonant differences that highlight gender inequality and movements for progressive change. Even the novel’s title, The Once and Future Witches, is a play on the fantasy fiction classic The Once and Future King (1958) by T.H White. By exchanging White’s eponymous male King Arthur for the stereotypically feminine term “witches,” Harrow indicates how the novel will resist gender norms and re-contextualize fables and fairytales.

In presenting the backstories of the Eastwood sisters, the novel also immediately tackles the covert male abuse enacted by the political powers of New Salem. The burgeoning suffrage movement is ridiculed by the male inhabitants, and their fear of witchcraft is even greater than their fear of female voters. Both in literature and in social sciences, witchcraft is often linked to notions of female power and subversion of patriarchal social structures. That Juniper supports women’s suffrage, Bella experiences same-sex attraction, and Agnes rejects motherhood and domesticity further align the protagonists with contemporary social justice causes while establishing that the sisters are radical within their own time.

While the theme of solidarity will develop more slowly over the course of the novel, Harrow initially presents evidence of its absence in New Salem. The Eastwoods have been estranged from one another for seven years. Juniper resents what she mistakenly perceives as her sister’s abandonment, while Bella and Agnes believe each other to be traitors. The return of magic begins with whispers and tears as Bella finds an old children’s verse that evokes memories of her lost sisters. When she unwittingly conjures the apparition of the black tower—the inciting incident of the novel—she sets New Salem on a collision course with magic and opens the way for a reunion with her biological sisters as well as her magical ones.