Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
"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).
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).
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Readers say *Witchcraft for Wayward Girls* vividly portrays the harsh realities faced by unwed pregnant teens in 1970s America, highlighting vulnerabi...
My heart broke in different shapes and sizes while reading this novel.
Witcraft For Wayward Girls takes place in the early 70s, just a few months before Roe v. Wade.
It's easy to bond with the young mothers juggling to grow up and having to face their newborn babies being ripped out of their arms. If I wasn't familiar with the author then I would be convinced that the story was written and told by a mother.
What a way to honor anyone close to your heart, who was forced into one of these homes for unwed young pregnant girls.
I've heard rumors about these girls and words I was taught to use for them.
I've changed my mind and heart and next time society asks me to join them in being judgmental, I'll remember what Grady Hendrix has shared and I'll know to be more empathetic.
I picked up Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix for my book club, thinking I was getting another of his signature horror-with-heart stories. What I got was something much more gutting, personal, and profound. I ended up buying a copy for my shelf because this one will stay with me for a long time.
This book hit me in a way few stories ever have. It’s set in the 1970s, but the horror it describes of young, unwed women being hidden away to give birth and surrender their babies, is heartbreakingly timeless. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the fear and helplessness these girls felt doesn’t feel like history. It feels like now.
As someone who was a teen mom in Texas, and as a child who was adopted from a teen mom, this story cut deep. I’ve known women who were sent to these homes in the 1960s. Their stories, and mine, are the echoes that run through every page of this book. Hendrix captures that mix of shame, isolation, and stolen autonomy with an empathy I honestly wasn’t expecting from a male author. His author’s note sealed the deal for me. You can tell he put in the work to get it right.
The witchcraft here isn’t broomsticks and hexes. It is about reclaiming power in a world that’s stripped it away. The magic becomes this raw metaphor for survival, for saying no more when every system tells you that you have no choice. And that ending? When Fern reconnects with her daughter over the phone… it absolutely wrecked me in the best way. The letter she writes, reflecting on reuniting with her old friends and the messy, imperfect beauty of it all, was exactly the closure I needed.
This book is not jump-scare kind of horror. It’s the kind of horror that crawls under your skin because it’s so rooted in truth. It’s about how women’s bodies, choices, and stories have always been treated like property. How, even in that darkness, women still find ways to take their power back.
I wouldn’t call it an easy read, but it’s an essential one. Grady Hendrix didn’t just write a horror novel. He wrote a tribute to generations of women who were told to disappear and refused to.
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