4.0
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
ByPublisher Description
"Superb ... a perfect horror for our imperfect age.” – The New York Times
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).
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4.0
Lauren
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📚RachaelReads
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“I went into this novel expecting a tale of mischievous girls who used witchcraft to get their own way. Instead of a supernatural horror, this gut-wrenching story is filled with real-world horror.
This book has everything! The pacing ebbs and flows in a unique way - coming in waves that make you anxious for the story to pick up or have your eyes moving so fast your brain can't keep up. Moving from one page to the next seamlessly, Hendrix interweaves witchcraft and witches with the real world and all the horrors the girls must face.
These girls have my whole heart!! I will forever hold them dear to me. We're introduced to Neva first, whose father abandons her at Wellwood House to have her baby and place it with an adoptive family. Upon entering the house, the girls are stripped of all identity and given a new name. Neva, now Fern, forms a bond with Rose, Holly, and Zinnia, also awaiting the arrival of their babies. Hendrix introduced us to immature, scared teens, pregnant, clueless, and naive. They are degraded, lose autonomy over themselves and their babies, and endure abuse. And of course, witches. As you follow the characters through the story, you watch them change and mature, even under their challenging circumstances. I can't fathom most adults enduring what these girls did! Hagar and Miriam, you have my utmost respect.
This book explores the heaviest themes, and Hendrix does so with grace. In the acknowledgements, Grady explains how he researched with credited sources and how women close to him shared their experiences. The power struggle, the rage, the journey of motherhood.. how a man articulated this struggle better than even I (who became a mother in my late teens) could ever have is beyond me.
This book will always be THAT book for me.”
Angel Lim
Created 3 days agoShare
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About Grady Hendrix
Grady Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling novelist and screenwriter who owns too many paperbacks and not enough shelves. He's the author of How to Sell a Haunted House, The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, and many more, including Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the seventies and eighties that won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction. (All the paperbacks are for "research" and he needs them.) His books have sold over two million copies and have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City and will die there, too, probably crushed to death beneath piles of those paperbacks.<strong data-olk-copy-source="MessageBody"><strong data-olk-copy-source="MessageBody">
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