The Factory Witches of Lowell

by C. S. Malerich

Overview

C. S. Malerich's The Factory Witches of Lowell is a riveting historical fantasy about witches going on strike in the historical mill-town of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Faced with abominable working conditions, unsympathetic owners, and hard-hearted managers, the mill girls of Lowell have had enough. They're going on strike, and they have a secret weapon on their side: a little witchcraft to ensure that no one leaves the picket line.

For the young women of Lowell, Massachusetts, freedom means fair wages for fair work, decent room and board, and a chance to escape the cotton mills before lint stops up their lungs. When the Boston owners decide to raise the workers’ rent, the girls go on strike. Their ringleader is Judith Whittier, a newcomer to Lowell but not to class warfare. Judith has already seen one strike fold and she doesn’t intend to see it again. Fortunately Hannah, her best friend in the boardinghouse—and maybe first love?—has a gift for the dying art of witchcraft.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250756565
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

C. S. MALERICH grew up in northern New Jersey. Storytelling was an early love, her first and favorite subjects being rabbits, felines, and horses. As an adolescent, she became interested in fantasy and mythology, which led her to major in Classics at Montclair State University. In 2005, she followed her best friend to Washington, DC, where she continued avoiding fluency in Greek and Latin and taught mythology to undergrads at the University of Maryland. She’s since pursued interests in folklore, cultural studies, and public health, sometimes all at once.

Her fiction often explores intersections of liberation and justice, with an infectious dance beat. Some of her work has appeared in Apparition Lit, Ares Magazine, and the Among Animals anthologies from eco-fiction publisher Ashland Creek Press. Her novel Fire & Locket was published in 2019.

C.S. continues to live and work in the DC area.

Editorial Reviews

The Factory Witches of Lowell is a sweetly magical tale of solidarity, owning the means of production, and the romance between a witch and a union girl. I loved it madly.” —Annalee Newitz

“Women's work — silent, invisible, necessary — has always looked like magic from the outside. The Factory Witches of Lowell makes literal the unspoken societal fear of women with the capacity to organize and the willingness to sacrifice for each other and for a better world.” —Madeline Ashby

“Malerich weaves a rich story, as meaningful as it is fantastic, that will have you cheering the underdog in this unique take on workers, bosses, and class struggle.” —P. Djèlí Clark

“New England witches fight for their rights with pragmatism and passion, using their wits and their art to battle forces of capitalist exploitation. A must-read for fans of authentic and engaging historical fantasy.” —Katharine Duckett

"Sisterhood, love, and magic blossom in this timely tale of protest based on a historical incident...Slender but still well-crafted and satisfying." —Kirkus

From the Publisher

2020-08-19
Sisterhood, love, and magic blossom in this timely tale of protest based on a historical incident.

In mid-19th-century Lowell, Massachusetts, the “mill girls” spin the thread and weave the cloth in the textile factories, all to the profit of the “Boston gentlemen” who own the mills where they work and the boardinghouses where they live. But when those very same gentlemen decide to raise the young women’s rent by a quarter a week, the women decide it’s time they had a say in their living and working conditions. Fierce Judith Whittier organizes the workers into a union and ensures their loyalty to the cause—and specifically, to their planned strike at the mills—with the help of her friend Hannah Pickering, a gentle and sickly Seer who bends her untrained magic into a spell that uses a lock of every woman’s hair to literally weave all of them into solidarity. Now the union members are magically compelled to maintain the strike, but what will they do when the mill owners’ agent, the hardhearted Mr. Boott, brings in new and more desperate workers to take the strikers’ places at the factories? As Judith and Hannah seek a magical solution to their cause, they both gradually realize that what they feel for one another is more than mere friendship. A feel-good message of a marginalized community battling amoral, exploitative capitalists might seem a bit obvious, but it also feels empowering during these uncertain times, when so many are still effectively disenfranchised. If the story has a flaw, it’s that it might’ve been richer with a higher page count and more development. The battle between the union and the establishment could have spawned additional twists and turns, more magic spells. Some more character development would also have been welcome; we learn a certain amount of Hannah’s history, but we learn very little about Judith’s backstory and even less about the other mill girls’.

Slender but still well-crafted and satisfying.

Kirkus Reviews