Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

By Grady Hendrix

Book Overview

"Superb ... a perfect horror for our imperfect age." - The New York Times

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER

They were never girls, they were witches . . . .

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they're sent to the 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, frightened, 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 the 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).

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593548981
• ISBN13: 9780593548981
• Release Date: January 2025
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Unexpected and hard to put down

I love a good feminist commentary wrapped in witchy themes. This book did not disappoint. The writing is beautiful and at no point did I find myself sure of the next plot twist or even wanting to put the book down.

The Witchcraft isn't the Horror, the Callousness of the World Is

I DEVOURED this book while on a trip from St. Louis to San Diego, so 400 pages in 6 hours. I haven't absorbed a book this quickly in *years.* The descriptions of pregnancy birth and labor and post-partum bodies are somewhat graphic but that's how they should be for such a visceral process. The girls taking back power and using the Turnabout to turn their illness back on Dr. Vincent and their rage and physical and emotional pain back on Miss Wellwood is so cathartic for them. If you've ever had a child and been treated poorly by your obstetrics team, this book will hit hard. They told these girls *nothing* and expected them to be normal at the end. They ignored blatant abuse and swept it under the rug. They disregarded medical emergencies and treated girls about to become mothers like children and prepared them for nothing. These girls were treated worse than cattle, and *everyone* from the parents to the hospital staff to the law was perfectly cool with that because they were young and unmarried. They were hidden away and given medical treatment with no explanation as to what it did, bullied into giving up wanted children and given absolutely zero support. The horror isn't the witches. The horror is that this is something that actually happened to millions of girls pre Roe and was considered perfectly okay. The horror is that none of the adults were horrified. The horror is that the girls started to believe they deserved the treatment. The horror is that if my mother were a decade older this could have happened to her. The horror is that there are millions of children in the real world who were stolen and have no way of knowing their personal history or their families until very, very recently.

Oy

My first Hendrix novel, but absolutely not my last. This book was soooooooo beautifully written. I cried, I laughed, I gasped out loud. 10/10.

Large print

I was excited to get this book, but when I got it is large print! Not a huge deal i will still read it, I just do not like or need large print