The Once and Future Witches

Juniper, the primary protagonist of the novel, is the youngest of the Eastwood sisters and represents the Maiden aspect of the Last Three witches. She is 17 and walks with a distinctive limp that requires the use of a cane, the result of an attack by her abusive father. She is described as having “hair as ragged and black as crow feathers” and is “the wildest of the three. The canny one, the feral one, the one with torn skirts and scraped knees and a green glitter in her eyes” (3). After being abandoned by her elder sisters, Juniper was left to bear the brunt of their father’s abuse, which instilled in her a volatile sense of rage. Eventually, she kills her father with a snake bite spell, and the crime sends her fleeing to New Salem, where she meets her sisters again.

Initially, Juniper is hostile to her siblings until she learns why they fled and the extent of her father’s role in their estrangement. She is a determined suffragette, equally devoted to gaining political and magical agency for women. Only at the end of the tale does her rage burn out, allowing her to empathize with the lost boy who used to be Gideon Hill.