The Once and Future Witches
2020 has been a year for witchy reads. From Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies to Alice Hoffman’s Magic Lessons, this year has witnessed the publication of many a witch tale. Among the notable witch-themed novels out this year is Alix E Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches (2020). Harrow creates a late nineteenth-century fictional world of Crow County (think southern Appalachia) and New Salem (one hundred miles south of the ruins of old Salem) for her reader in The Once and Future Witches. From its opening line, magic runs through The Once and Future Witches, as three wayward sisters, whom life has separated for seven years, find themselves drawn to the same city square on the same day. Quickly, the reader discovers that James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna Eastwood are bound for great adventures as magic seems to connect them to one another as surely as it spills forth from them. Through the Eastwood sisters, Harrow explores themes of maiden, mother, crone, as she constructs a wild, fantastic world that somehow blends a fictional nineteenth-century backdrop (with mill girls, early labor unions, and suffragettes) with elements of well-known fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Ultimately, The Once and Future Witches contemplates the very nature of magic itself, and the creative power of great need.
Part of the magic of Harrow’s story is the way she transforms true history—the Salem witch trials or the race, suffrage and labor movements of the late nineteenth century—into a fantastical world in which fairy tales and nursery rhymes evoke more than previously thought. Harrow’s novel builds upon myriad magical traditions—familiars to Avalon have a place in this novel—as she weaves the ways and the words throughout her story. The will, the third component of magic in The Once and Future Witches, is found lurking in the heart of anyone longing for a better world. I thoroughly enjoyed the way Harrow builds her plot around the components of many familiar nursey rhymes and fairy tales, as the Eastwood sisters unravel the mystery they unlock in the novel’s early chapters.
If the Eastwood sisters represent the three phases of womanhood—fierce, young Juniper as maiden, realistic, defensive Agnes as mother, and learned, analytical Beatrice as crone—each of them grows as they learn more about who they are and the bonds that connect them to one another. While set in the late nineteenth century, The Once and Future Witches includes a host of themes relevant in today’s world: childhood abuse, betrayal, abortion, romantic love (between two women as well as between a man and a woman), transgender identity, racial segregation, and plenty of social justice. Even the dark forces at work in New Salem, and the unexplained illness that emerges throughout the city, feel uncannily familiar at times. Harrow’s novel cleverly interweaves many of today’s issues with fantasy, magic, and fairy tales to transport her reader while exploring compelling contemporary themes.
The Once and Future Witches includes plenty of magic, love, and defiance as the Eastwood sisters find themselves and their place in history. This is a novel that at once investigates the internal transformation of individual characters while it also contemplates the power of collective action. All in all, The Once and Future Witches is a must-read for anyone who enjoys books that interweave fantasy and magic with social justice politics. If you, like me, have felt drawn to all the witchy reads out this year, The Once and Future Witches is definitely one to pick up.
A Great Passage:
“That’s all magic is really: the space between what you have and what you need” (404).
Bibliography:
Harrow, Alix E. The Once and Future Witches. Redhook Books: 2020.
