The Once and Future Witches Summary Chapter by Chapter | Alix E. Harrow
Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is a breathtaking historical fantasy that reimagines the fight for women’s suffrage as a battle to reclaim forgotten magic.
Set in an alternate 1893, the novel follows the estranged Eastwood sisters—ferce Juniper, pragmatic Agnes, and bookish Bella—as they reunite in the city of New Salem.
Their personal reconciliation sparks a magical resurgence, challenging the powers that have systematically erased witchcraft and suppressed women’s rights.
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Book Structure Overview
Total Sections: 5 Parts + Epilogue
Total Chapters: 45
Prologue: No
Epilogue: Yes
Narrative Flow: Linear progression with interwoven witch-tales that expand historical and mythic context
Book Table of Contents
Part One: The Wayward Sisters (Chapters 1-12)
Part Two: Hand in Hand (Chapters 13-26)
Part Three: Burned & Bound (Chapters 27-35)
Part Four: What Is Lost (Chapters 36-43)
Part Five: What Is Found (Chapters 44-45)
Epilogue
A Similar Summary: The Secret Book Society Summary: A Sisterhood of Secrets And Survival
The Once and Future Witches Summary Chapter by Chapter
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This section contains detailed, chapter-by-chapter plot summaries.
Part One: The Wayward Sisters
Chapter 1: Juniper’s Arrival
James Juniper Eastwood arrives in New Salem on the Spring Equinox, wanted and limping. She uses a cobweb spell to evade capture and stumbles into a suffrage rally.
Filled with rage toward her absent sisters and abusive father, she feels a primal pull toward the rally’s energy.
As the wind rises, a strange magical disruption begins to ripple through the city square, hinting at a power long suppressed.
Chapter 2: Agnes’s Pull
Agnes Amaranth, working a double shift at the mill, discovers she is pregnant. A strange tug in her chest draws her to the city square, where she watches the suffrage rally.
Suddenly, a hole in reality tears open, revealing a fleeting vision of a black tower against a foreign sky.
The world mends itself, but Agnes is left deeply unsettled and mesmerized by what she witnessed.
Chapter 3: Bella’s Spell
Beatrice Belladonna, a librarian, finds a hidden verse in a book of witch-tales. Whispering the words, she feels a simmer of magic in her blood. Her spell causes the spectral black tower to manifest fully in the square.
Overwhelmed, she collapses and is caught by Juniper.
The three sisters are violently, magically reunited for the first time in seven years.
Chapter 4: An Uneasy Reunion
Juniper takes a feverish Bella to Agnes’s boarding house room. Juniper reveals their father is dead. Old resentments and the ghost of a childhood betrayal hang heavily in the air.
The sisters share an uneasy night, the unfamiliar thrum of magic and unresolved history binding them together in their cramped refuge.
Chapter 5: A Forbidden Alliance
Agnes wakes with morning sickness. Juniper is determined to join the suffrage movement and believes witchcraft is key.
Bella flees to the library, terrified.
Juniper follows, arguing that women’s rights and witchery are two sides of the same forbidden power. Bella reluctantly agrees to take Juniper to the New Salem Women’s Association headquarters.
Chapter 6: The NSWA
At the NSWA, leader Miss Cady Stone rejects Juniper’s talk of witchcraft, fearing it will taint their respectable cause. Bella meets Cleopatra Quinn, a sharp Black journalist.
Cleo hints at knowing her own magical secrets and challenges Bella to think about what was truly stolen from women—not just votes, but power.
Chapter 7: Agnes’s Choice
Agnes visits a midwife, considering an abortion but hesitating. The midwife’s tarot cards repeatedly show the Tower.
Outside, Agnes encounters supporters of the pious politician Gideon Hill. Sensing a dark magic lurking in their shadows, she spits at them in defiance, a small act of rebellion.
Chapter 8: A March Defied
Cleo visits Bella at the library, revealing that Black women have preserved their own “Aunt Nancy” magic. Juniper plans an unsanctioned suffrage march after Gideon Hill revokes the permit.
Juniper suspects Hill is being influenced by a witch when she sees his shadow move unnaturally. She decides to march anyway.
Chapter 9: The Call to the Fair
Bella reads by witch-light, deciding to join Juniper’s illegal march. Agnes, despite her fears, also receives Juniper’s invitation.
The city air feels electrically charged, as if a storm—both literal and metaphorical—is gathering as the sisters prepare to converge at the Centennial Fair.
Chapter 10: The First Spectacle
At the Fair, Juniper and six other women reveal magically-summoned white cloaks. A riot erupts as anti-suffragist Grace Wiggin denounces them as witches.
Agnes saves a child from a magical snake Juniper created.
Cleo uses a chalk spell to hide Bella. The sisters flee into a brothel called Salem’s Sin to escape the chaos.
Chapter 11: Truths in Hiding
In the brothel, Agnes and Juniper confront their painful past: their mother’s death, their father’s abuse, and Bella’s childhood betrayal that led to Agnes being sent away.
They reconcile when Juniper feels Agnes’s baby move. Juniper reveals the black tower is the legendary “Lost Way of Avalon.”
Chapter 12: Expulsion and Resolve
The sisters go to the NSWA, where Miss Stone expels Juniper for publicly practicing witchcraft.
Undeterred and now cast out from the respectable movement, the sisters resolve to form their own secret society.
They are joined by Jennie Lind, inspired by their defiance, and vow to bring back the Lost Way of Avalon themselves.
Part Two: Hand in Hand
Chapter 13: The Sisters of Avalon
The sisters formally found the “Sisters of Avalon.” They use a blood-and-ink spell to secretly recruit women through an advertisement.
Dozens from all walks of life attend the first meeting in Agnes’s magically expanded room. Juniper declares their purpose: to reclaim the power stolen from women and rewrite the world.
Chapter 14: The Bronze Pig
For their first public “spectacle,” the Sisters turn the statue of Saint George into a bronze pig, a symbol of defiance.
Bella and Cleo grow closer while researching clues about the tower. Bella shares her traumatic past at St. Hale’s sanitarium with Cleo, deepening their bond.
Chapter 15: The Factory Forest
The second spectacle involves magically regrowing a forest over the site of a burned factory where women died. Agnes seeks “men’s magic” of destruction and meets union organizer August Lee.
She wins a bet against him, earning a rust spell and his growing respect.
Chapter 16: Betrayal in the Market
August joins the Sisters as a trainee, bringing flowers for Agnes. Bella discovers Cleo is a member of the “Daughters of Tituba,” a secret Black magical society.
She follows Cleo to a hidden night market and sees her reporting on the Sisters, feeling deeply betrayed.
Chapter 17: Ambush in the Witch-Yard
The third spectacle in a cemetery witch-yard—growing a golden apple tree—is ambushed by Gideon Hill and the police.
To allow the others to escape, Juniper sacrifices herself and is arrested for murder, marking a major escalation in the conflict.
Chapter 18: Rescue and Confession
Cleo saves Bella from the cemetery using Underground Railroad tunnels. She confesses she was spying but now wants to be a true Sister.
Bella tries to see Juniper in prison but is blacklisted from the library and threatened with arrest herself.
Chapter 19: Plans for Rescue
Agnes is blacklisted at the mill. Juniper suffers in the “Deeps” prison with an iron collar that burns at magic use.
Bella, Cleo, and the librarian Mr. Blackwell plan a rescue, realizing they must use the “Lost Way” spell to summon the tower and free her.
Chapter 20: The Final Words
Bella and Cleo journey to the ruins of Old Salem.
They find the final words of the Avalon summoning spell hidden in a child’s sewing sampler. Using a signal spell, they alert the sisters to begin the ritual on the summer solstice.
Chapter 21: Summoning Avalon
On the solstice, the sisters work a massive, coordinated spell from different locations to summon Avalon.
Juniper’s prison collar heats unbearably, but with her sisters’ strength, she shatters it. The black tower manifests in New Salem, and Juniper uses a chalk circle to teleport inside.
Chapter 22: The Library of Lost Things
The sisters reunite inside the tower, discovering it is a vast, ancient library containing all the world’s stolen magic and knowledge. Juniper is healed by the tower’s power. Bella and Cleo begin the monumental task of cataloging the spells.
Chapter 23: Spreading the Words
Juniper grows restless and sneaks back into the city to spread magic, breaking women out of prison and sabotaging a racist exhibition.
Her actions raise the city’s tension, and Gideon Hill’s “Inquisitors” begin violent raids.
Chapter 24: Agnes’s Dilemma
Agnes works under a false name, hiding.
She reunites with August, who stayed to teach magic to his union. Agnes struggles between her desire to fight and her need to survive for her unborn child, feeling the weight of her choices.
Chapter 25: Labor and Capture
Agnes curses her mill boss, warning his heart will stop if he harms women.
Her water breaks, but when she seeks the midwife, she finds the place raided. Inquisitors arrest her and take her to St. Charity Hospital.
Chapter 26: Eve’s Birth
Agnes is shackled during a traumatic labor.
Bella and Juniper find her via a mirror spell and teleport in to free her. Agnes gives birth to a daughter, naming her Eve Everlasting. August arrives with a dire warning: Gideon Hill has found the tower and set it ablaze.
Part Three: Burned & Bound
Chapter 27: The Tower Burns
Juniper teleports to the square and sees the library tower engulfed in magical flames. Gideon Hill taunts her, demonstrating his control over shadows.
Juniper returns to the hospital, and the sisters face the devastating loss of their library.
Chapter 28: Refuge in New Cairo
The sisters hide in New Cairo with August’s help. Bella and Cleo share an intimate night, solidifying their relationship.
Cleo tells Bella the story of Aunt Nancy stealing words back, offering hope that magic lives beyond books.
Chapter 29: A Decision to Fight
Bella performs a spell to banish the tower’s smoking ruins “elsewhere,” protecting it from Hill. The sisters, instead of fleeing, make the defiant choice to stay in New Salem and fight Hill to the end.
Chapter 30: Hill’s Ascent
The sisters hide at Salem’s Sin brothel. Gideon Hill wins the mayoral election and passes harsh new laws against witchcraft. Agnes moves to a different boarding house, feeling the city’s fear and oppression intensify.
Chapter 31: Eve is Taken
Baby Eve falls ill with a magical fever.
Agnes tries to summon August for help but walks into a trap. Inquisitors kidnap Eve. Desperate, Agnes heads to the town square to confront Gideon Hill directly.
Chapter 32: A Mother’s Confrontation
Agnes confronts Hill in his office. He offers to return Eve in exchange for her sisters. Her familiar, a black hare named Pan, attacks Hill, revealing he can be wounded.
Hill orders them to meet in the square for a public “execution.”
Chapter 33: Summoning the Last Three
The sisters go to the fairgrounds to summon the spirits of the Last Three Witches of the West.
The spirits—Maiden, Mother, and Crone—manifest, offering their ancient knowledge and power for the coming battle.
Chapter 34: Hill’s True Identity
The Three reveal Gideon Hill is the immortal soul of George of Hyll, the original witch-hunter, who has stolen bodies for centuries. They teach Agnes the “Humpity-Dumpity” soul-sundering spell, the key to defeating him forever.
Chapter 35: Preparation for the End
The sisters return to New Salem and gather their allies.
They prepare to turn Hill’s planned public execution into a final, massive stand, ready to reveal magic to the city and break his power.
Part Four: What Is Lost
Chapter 36: The Final Preparation
In an abandoned house, the sisters and their allies make their final preparations.
Cleo gives Bella a ring, a token of their commitment. Juniper rallies the Sisters of Avalon for a mass demonstration of magical resistance.
Chapter 37: The Stand in the Square
The sisters stand on the plinth in St. George’s Square. They work a collective sleep spell to free the prisoners in the Deeps. This act serves as a signal, and witches begin to reveal themselves throughout the crowd.
Chapter 38: Trial by Fire
During the “trial,” August uses a water spell to protect them from fire. Agnes denounces Hill publicly, exposing his true, ancient nature. In a powerful moment, a hundred women don pointed hats, reclaiming the word “witch.”
Chapter 39: Banishing the Shadows
Bella leads the witches in the “Queen Anne” spell, which strips Hill of his shadowy power. His true, withered, ancient form is revealed to the horrified public, breaking his illusion of piety and strength.
Chapter 40: The Strangler’s Sash
Grace Wiggin, seeing Hill’s true monstrous nature, realizes her own complicity. In an act of furious redemption, she strangles him with her suffragist sash. Hill’s body dies, but his soul attempts to leap into the infant Eve.
Chapter 41: Juniper’s Sacrifice
To save her niece, Juniper uses a binding spell to tether Hill’s fleeing soul to her own. She then walks into the execution pyre, sacrificing her life to ensure Hill’s soul is destroyed forever in the flames.
Chapter 42: Binding a Spirit
As Juniper’s body is consumed, the gathered witches of New Salem chant the Ring Around the Roses rhyme. They work a final spell to bind her spirit to the Lost Way of Avalon, preventing her from being lost to death.
Chapter 43: Flight from Salem
With Hill defeated, Agnes and Bella use a rowan branch spell to fly away from the chaotic square with baby Eve, leaving a transformed New Salem behind.
Part Five: What Is Found
Chapter 44: Agnes in Chicago
In the spring of 1894, Agnes lives in Chicago, fighting for workers’ rights and quietly spreading magic. August remains by her side, helping to raise Eve.
The fight continues, but with hope and a growing community.
Chapter 45: Bella in New Orleans
Bella and Cleo are in New Orleans, working to rebuild the grimoire of lost spells. They chronicle the true history of witches, ensuring the knowledge will never be lost again.
Their love and partnership flourish.
Epilogue
Juniper’s spirit resides in the restored Tower of Avalon, now located on the Eastwood farm.
She is no longer alone, teaching a new generation of “lost girls” the ways and words of magic.
The world has begun to change, and witches are once again finding their power.
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