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inverarityTeen moms in the 60s discover witches are real.
Berkley, 2025, 482 pages
This horror novel is ostensibly about witches, but it's really about how much it sucked to be an unwed mother in the 60s and how horrific pregnancy and childbirth is. Grady Hendrix clearly did plenty of research and some of worst moments in the book are his medical jargon-filled descriptions of what happens when a baby comes out of someone — particularly when attended by unsympathetic doctors and nurses who think the girl giving birth is human trash.
That's the real theme of this book: girls who got knocked up in the 60s and are sent off to a "home for wayward girls" in Florida, and are subjected to endless humiliation and shame before being forced to give up their babies. Supposedly they are not forced, but the pressure brought to bear on girls as young as 14, and the very realistic assessment of their prospects if they decide to keep the child and become unwed teenage mothers in 1969, means there isn't really a choice.
Fern (not her real name; all of them are given fake names by Miss Wellwood, the self-righteous church lady who owns and runs Wellwood House) is one such girl. She gets in trouble after messing around in the back of a car with her high school boyfriend. Immediately everyone from her erstwhile boyfriend to her own family agrees that this is all her fault, and they have her bundled off to Florida to give birth out of sight. Supposedly she can come back home afterward, pretend she was at drama camp all summer, and forget this ever happened.
At Wellwood House, Fern meets other teenage girls like her. Some of them are delusional, believing their babydaddies will marry them, or that they can somehow keep their child. Hard reality bites everyone, but it's the girl who turns out to have been groomed by her pastor when she was a preteen, and the pastor is going to adopt her baby and raise it to be his next victim, who makes Fern realize just how horrific reality can be.
At this point, they meet a kindly old librarian who runs the bookmobile that comes by weekly. The librarian gives Fern a book with the very sixties title "How To Be a Groovy Witch."
Despite the title, this little paperback turns out to be the real deal, and soon Fern and her friends are doing real witchcraft. At first it's just relieving morning sickness, then it's wreaking vengeance on some of the adults who are tormenting them. But eventually it turns out that the librarian and her coven have plans of their own, and they are not benign. Fern is initially under the control of a cruel, uncaring system that treats her like garbage because she had sex with a boy, but witchcraft, while giving the illusion of an opportunity to make someone else pay the price for once, is just extracting a price of its own.
Despite being a horror novel (and having some pretty horrific and bloody scenes), much of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls felt more like a social commentary than a supernatural thriller. Over and over again, we see girls being blamed, shamed, humiliated, abused, by a misogynistic system that never once holds the man responsible. I was a little irked at the complete lack of empathy from any adult in the book; surely not every single American in the 60s was this cruel and self-righteous? Well, presumably there were parents who would not have treated their pregnant teenage daughters like this, but of course they wouldn't have sent them to a place like Wellwood House.
By now you're probably expecting (and hoping) for Fern to unleash in a moment of female rage and a Carrie-style bloodbath. And that is where the climax initially seems to be going. I wouldn't say Hendrix punts; there is a lot of damage and drama, but it would be too simple to just have witches stomp the Patriarchy. So we get a somewhat satisfying ending, though the best part is the epilogue.
I'm a Grady Hendrix fan and have enjoyed all his books so far. He really likes female main characters but avoids most men-writing-women problems, and he really likes the 80s (and the 60s too, apparently). His horror novels tend to be a little bit parody and less grimdark (even when there is horror and gore, it's in service to a more traditional story), but being the huge horror nerd he is, there is also plenty of gothic atmosphere and pop culture callouts.
Also by Grady Hendrix: My reviews of Paperbacks from Hell, We Sold Our Souls, Horrorstör, My Best Friend's Exorcism, The Final Girl Support Group, and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
My complete list of book reviews.
Berkley, 2025, 482 pages
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.
This horror novel is ostensibly about witches, but it's really about how much it sucked to be an unwed mother in the 60s and how horrific pregnancy and childbirth is. Grady Hendrix clearly did plenty of research and some of worst moments in the book are his medical jargon-filled descriptions of what happens when a baby comes out of someone — particularly when attended by unsympathetic doctors and nurses who think the girl giving birth is human trash.
That's the real theme of this book: girls who got knocked up in the 60s and are sent off to a "home for wayward girls" in Florida, and are subjected to endless humiliation and shame before being forced to give up their babies. Supposedly they are not forced, but the pressure brought to bear on girls as young as 14, and the very realistic assessment of their prospects if they decide to keep the child and become unwed teenage mothers in 1969, means there isn't really a choice.
Fern (not her real name; all of them are given fake names by Miss Wellwood, the self-righteous church lady who owns and runs Wellwood House) is one such girl. She gets in trouble after messing around in the back of a car with her high school boyfriend. Immediately everyone from her erstwhile boyfriend to her own family agrees that this is all her fault, and they have her bundled off to Florida to give birth out of sight. Supposedly she can come back home afterward, pretend she was at drama camp all summer, and forget this ever happened.
At Wellwood House, Fern meets other teenage girls like her. Some of them are delusional, believing their babydaddies will marry them, or that they can somehow keep their child. Hard reality bites everyone, but it's the girl who turns out to have been groomed by her pastor when she was a preteen, and the pastor is going to adopt her baby and raise it to be his next victim, who makes Fern realize just how horrific reality can be.
At this point, they meet a kindly old librarian who runs the bookmobile that comes by weekly. The librarian gives Fern a book with the very sixties title "How To Be a Groovy Witch."
Despite the title, this little paperback turns out to be the real deal, and soon Fern and her friends are doing real witchcraft. At first it's just relieving morning sickness, then it's wreaking vengeance on some of the adults who are tormenting them. But eventually it turns out that the librarian and her coven have plans of their own, and they are not benign. Fern is initially under the control of a cruel, uncaring system that treats her like garbage because she had sex with a boy, but witchcraft, while giving the illusion of an opportunity to make someone else pay the price for once, is just extracting a price of its own.
Despite being a horror novel (and having some pretty horrific and bloody scenes), much of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls felt more like a social commentary than a supernatural thriller. Over and over again, we see girls being blamed, shamed, humiliated, abused, by a misogynistic system that never once holds the man responsible. I was a little irked at the complete lack of empathy from any adult in the book; surely not every single American in the 60s was this cruel and self-righteous? Well, presumably there were parents who would not have treated their pregnant teenage daughters like this, but of course they wouldn't have sent them to a place like Wellwood House.
By now you're probably expecting (and hoping) for Fern to unleash in a moment of female rage and a Carrie-style bloodbath. And that is where the climax initially seems to be going. I wouldn't say Hendrix punts; there is a lot of damage and drama, but it would be too simple to just have witches stomp the Patriarchy. So we get a somewhat satisfying ending, though the best part is the epilogue.
I'm a Grady Hendrix fan and have enjoyed all his books so far. He really likes female main characters but avoids most men-writing-women problems, and he really likes the 80s (and the 60s too, apparently). His horror novels tend to be a little bit parody and less grimdark (even when there is horror and gore, it's in service to a more traditional story), but being the huge horror nerd he is, there is also plenty of gothic atmosphere and pop culture callouts.
Also by Grady Hendrix: My reviews of Paperbacks from Hell, We Sold Our Souls, Horrorstör, My Best Friend's Exorcism, The Final Girl Support Group, and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
My complete list of book reviews.
