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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
A Horror Novel by Grady Hendrix
Subgenres:
- Historical Fiction,
- Feminist
This book is for you if you're into...
- Occult power struggles among girls in oppressive institutions
- 1970s Florida settings thick with heat and secrets
- Stories where forbidden books change everything
From Little Stack
Taking place in the sweltering summer of 1970, we follow 15-year-old Fern as she arrives at Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida. Here, she meets girls from all walks of life who are in the same shameful position as she is and have been sent there to live out their pregnancy before surrendering their babies for adoption.
Every minute detail of the girls’ lives is strictly controlled: from the food they eat to how they spend their time. But then Fern meets Miss Parcae, a librarian, who gives her a book about witchcraft. For the first time, the girls have power in their own hands. But it comes at a price that is far steeper than any of them imagined.
Unsettling, uncomfortable and deeply relevant, this book has stayed with me ever since I first cracked the spine.
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.
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