Grady Hendrix, the modern master of a genre I would describe as “horror plus,” is back with a creepy, quirky new novel of feminist witchery.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls brings us 15-year-old Neva Craven, whose father delivers her to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, in the sweltering summer of 1970. Neva is pregnant and scared, and she has come to this house for unwed mothers to have her baby in secret and surrender it for adoption. The house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, insists that none of the girls use their real names, so Neva becomes Fern, and she joins other botanically named residents including Rose, Zinnia and Holly.
Fans of the author’s previous work will appreciate his trademark wry humor and his knack for revealing the darker side of humanity. Wellwood House is a cruel and controlling place, and the girls have no sense of agency until a mysterious librarian arrives in her bookmobile and offers them a volume titled How to Be a Groovy Witch. Armed with the book of spells, Fern and her cohorts explore their power to seek vengeance on the various adults who have done them wrong.
Make no mistake, this is a horror novel with plenty of blood, sweat and gore. (There’s one scene involving fingernails that I won’t soon forget.) Hendrix also offers primal accounts of childbirth and the terrors of sexual assault. The teenage protagonists represent a generation of silenced women, and their journey toward independence makes this book about much more than cauldrons and broomsticks.
