There are characters in here all across all spectrums of life: women, men, trans people, gay, straight, black, white, native, rich, poor, sex workers, immigrants, midwives and Gibson Girls, and more in between. Harrow does such a great job portraying the city and its inhabitants, and the various attitudes, both hidden and out in the open, towards women and witchcraft and the social norm. The setting of Salem in the late 1800s is a fruitful one. I loved that the way we get into the story is through suffragists, but it expands from there. I loved almost everything about this whole set-up. And Bella, who was sent to an asylum SPOILERS when she was caught making time with the baker’s daughter (I think it was the baker’s daughter? someone correct me if I’m wrong) END SPOILERS has extra trauma and self-esteem issues on top of that she and her sisters experienced at the hands of their father.
Juniper is a fiery, restless, angry young woman out to start trouble. They find themselves drawn together in New Salem at the start of the summer in 1893 (Old Salem burned down in the 1600s the witch trials went a little bit differently here, with magic being real).
Our three main characters are the sisters Eastwood: Juniper, Agnes, and Bella, who were separated by circumstance seven years before, and who are all traumatized by a painful childhood with an abusive father after their mother died in childbirth. Such magic is often scorned as “women’s magic.”
All that remains of magic is little things passed down from mother to daughter: mending a hem, a small light in the dark to find a needle in a sewing box, a little something to ease a birth along. It’s now 1893, and witches and witchery have long been gone from the world, thanks to a purge led by St.
The premise here is that we’re in an alternate history where magic and witches were once real, not just scapegoats for whatever was frightening the patriarchy at the time (if you don’t know about the history of witch hats and alewives, please click this link). I would looooove to see this adapted as a limited event series on a premium streaming service or network. To quote the book itself, it’s “witchy as hell.” Honestly, the only thing keeping me from giving this five stars is that the style of the writing didn’t perfectly gel with me, and that is obviously very subjective.
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