The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

There’s no such thing as witches, but there used to be.

i used to be an academic, sort of. i got my master's in history, and spent lots of hours pursuing, considering, weighing, and writing the truth. now, of course, i'm a professional liar. this book in particular is full of lies. i lied about the names of cities and people and the dates of the pullman strike and the triangle shirtwaist fire. i made up an entire alternate history of witchcraft and worker's rights. i combined real people and condensed timelines so that i could fit something as vast and diverse and diffuse as the women's suffrage movement into a single book. but the best lies are the ones that are based on the truth. you know that twain quote, "history never repeats itself, but it rhymes"? this book doesn't accurately reflect our history, but it does rhyme with it. (a small thing that amuses me is that twain may or may not have said that; nobody seems to know where it came from, but it persists, one of history's little white lies). so i want to thank you for putting up with 500 pages of fibs. i'm providing these notes for anyone who wants to know where it rhymes.