Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
Hardcover | Paperback Large Print | Kindle | Audiobook
By Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: January 14, 2025

After being secreted away at a home for wayward girls, a desperate pregnant teen turns to witchcraft for help unaware of its severe consequences in Grady Hendrix‘s captivating new body horror, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls.

Neva Craven was an average 15-year-old girl living in the American South in 1970, socializing with friends in high school and landing the lead in the school play. She even had a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day for the first time. But when Neva learns she’s pregnant, her family sends her away to a secluded Maternity Home to finish out her pregnancy in secret. After giving birth, she’s expected to give her baby up for adoption, then return home to her old life as if nothing ever happened.

At the Home For Unwed Mothers, its prim and proper proprietress, Miss Wellwood, gives all the girls an assumed flower-related name to protect their real identities, rechristening Neva as “Fern.” Wellwood shows little empathy to her “garden of girls,” who she says are there to “shed their sin.” She has the reluctant residents live under strict rules and moral codes, with rigid schedules, monitored correspondences, and restrictions on diet, reading materials, and movements throughout the house and the outside. Even the on-site medical staff is less than sympathetic, dismissing Fern’s roommate Zinnia’s debilitating morning sickness as psychosomatic.

Life at the Home is frustrating and difficult, so Fern eagerly awaits a visit from a mobile library, so she can finally have something to read. When the Bookmobile arrives, she meets its enigmatic librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives Fern an unsanctioned book titled, “How To Be A Groovy Witch.” As luck would have it, the book contains a spell to handle Zinnia’s morning sickness issue, giving Fern hope that witchcraft might be the way to help the other girls, one of whom comes from an abusive situation. While Fern might be book smart, she’s naive in the ways of the world and doesn’t realize that dabbling in magic comes with a price. Is Fern willing to give up the comforts of her old life to commit fully to the world of witchery? Unfortunately, she might not have a choice.

Author Grady Hendrix excels at using the supernatural to highlight real-life horrors, which he does again in his latest effort, where witchcraft empowers young girls who’ve had their autonomy ripped from them. But the story is so compelling that it doesn’t even need the supernatural aspects; the titled witchcraft doesn’t even enter the picture until quarter of the way through the nearly 500-page book! But when it does, the reader relishes in the success of Fern’s vengeful spells, much like in movies like The Craft and The Witches of Eastwick. One unsympathetic character gets an overdose of morning sickness, while another becomes trapped in a body horror nightmare and we don’t feel sorry for them at all. They truly had it coming.

But unlike in the aforementioned films, Hendrix doesn’t indulge in the revenge aspect though. It’s not one spell after satisfying spell, though the descriptive writing does vividly capture the outcome of Fern’s castings. Instead, the author gets right to the point that there are consequences for one’s actions, even if those actions might seem justified. Fern and her friends have choices to make about how far they are willing to go and what they are willing to sacrifice in order to use these new powers. And can they even trust the source of these powers? Or should they perhaps trust in their own abilities instead?

The occult aspects of the story are what officially make it a “horror” tale, with summoned storms, hexes, and inhuman pregnancies, but that’s just a stand-in for the true horror, which is the oppression of women. In this case, it’s the pain of pregnancy and loss, as well as the injustices faced by women when their right to make decisions for themselves is taken away. Prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that established a constitutional right to abortion, unwed pregnant women were sent in disgrace to these typically religious-affiliated Maternity Homes, as there was no legal right to terminate a pregnancy. These women were ostracized from society, shamed, hidden away to have their babies in secret, and then forced to give away their child. They were expelled from school, deemed unhireable for employment, and considered unsuitable for marriage, not to mention labeled “sinful” and “slutty.” Also, the “blame” for the pregnancy and even how it might adversely affect the man who impregnated them (even if it was done without consent!) was placed solely on the woman.

Maternity Homes and their associated antiquated view of women might seem like ancient history in 2025, but now is actually the perfect time to bring them to light, as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and many states have implemented abortion bans, which means once again women are not free to choose what happens to their own bodies. How far away are we from the return of these homes and casting women into the shadows again?

Heart-wrenching, suspenseful, and memorable, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a powerful story of oppression, retaliation, and resilience that takes classic horror elements and incorporates them into unsettling past social norms. It’s a cautionary tale appropriate for current times that steeps its social commentary in blood, guts, and magic.