Summary

The novel is broken up into sections titled with dates and phases of the moon. The first section is “September 4, 1880: New Moon.” The first chapter in this section is “City of Wonders.” The novel is narrated by an omniscient narrator in the third-person past. This chapter skips about to half a dozen different women in New York who were practicing different sorts of witchcraft. A prostitute contemplated the enchanted rabbit’s foot one of her clients had given her as he told her how a witch had given it to him. A young woman had visions in her dishwater about people drowning in the river. A housekeeper created a witch’s bottle to chase away the ghost in her room. A woman entered a tea shop near Madison Square Park and asked a couple of witches...