“We were girls…bad girls, neurotic girls, needy girls, wayward girls, selfish girls, girls with Electra complexes, girls trying to fill a void, girls who needed attention, girls with pasts, girls from broken homes, girls who needed discipline, girls desperate to fit in, girls in trouble, girls who couldn’t say no.
But for girls like us, down there at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend,” (Hendrix 6).
After telling her family she’s pregnant, fifteen-year-old Fern is sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida to deliver her baby, give it up for adoption, and then return home as if nothing ever happened, a common enough though unspoken thing in the 1970s. As Fern settles in with her hippie roommate Rose, mute Holly, and aspiring musician Zinnia, the girls do chores, have their diets restricted, and have every moment of their lives controlled by the stern Miss Wellwood. But there is some respite from the bookmobile which visits the home every two weeks, and Miss Parcae, the old librarian who gives Fern a book that could change everything, for a price.
Grady Hendrix is one of my favourite horror authors because he’s never writing just to scare, he’s writing horror to prove a point. Whether it’s to highlight a moment in the past that isn’t talked about like the homes for unmarried women in Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, mental health and addiction in My Best Friend’s Exorcism, or child abuse, grooming, and how a person can metaphorically sell their soul for wealth in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. It’s not just the monsters that are scary, it’s the people and their decisions, about what the monsters can make them do.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls was a wonderful book that really got into the hot, sultry summer of 1970. I thought Fern was a great protagonist to follow and I liked how the horror here didn’t really come from the witches but from the pregnancy itself, the delivery, and how some of these characters ended up getting pregnant. One of the most horrifying scenes in the whole book takes place in a hospital where a character is completely dehumanized.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls made me angry at times and it made me mad, because this book is set in the seventies and while pregnancy homes may not be as sought after a solution for pregnant teens I wouldn’t be surprised if they still exist on the down-low, like conversion therapy still does. It makes me angry because the book mentions Roe vs Wade and how that changed the amount of homes that existed and how with that overturned these homes could be popping up again. It makes me angry because even in 2025 there is still judgement on unwed pregnant people, that the blame is usually on the pregnant individual rather than the person who caused the pregnancy to occur.
That being said, there were some issues I had. While Fern is our protagonist there is one chapter that switches to Miss Wellwood, and while I understand why this happened it didn’t help with the flow of the story. I already had some thoughts into Miss Wellwood’s backstory and ended up being right, and while I liked what Hendrix was trying to show with her I felt he could have gone deeper. It felt like Miss Wellwood was only really present when it was convenient to the plot. Similarly, certain character motivations get pushed aside in favour of others which really made no sense because the one goal established very early on is arguably one that shouldn’t have been sidelined at all.
Still though, it’s a wonderful book. In Hendrix’s author’s note he acknowledges that as a middle aged, childless man he probably isn’t the best choice to write this book but based on family revelations he wrote to understand these homes and the people who would have been sent to them. I personally think he did a great job giving empathy, care, and understanding to his characters and I’m sure many readers will find much needed comfort and acknowledgement in this book.
Publication: January 14 2025
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 496 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, 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 knows she’s going to go home and 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.
Sarah O'Connor 