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Grady Hendrix prefers his scares to have substance. More specifically, the author tends to give a unique, witty, and poignant spin on classic monster archetypes and horror subgenres in his novels. My Best Friend’s Exorcism put a lighthearted, charming ’80s spin on demonic possession, The Final Girl Support Group envisioned forged friendships born of slasher trauma, and How to Sell a Haunted House captured a deeply Southern family learning to reconnect amidst a pesky poltergeist problem, for a few examples.

Hendrix’s latest, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, offers the author’s take on witches but with a far meatier and more mature story grounding it. Here, witchcraft is rarely as scary as the historically based horrors tormenting a handful of terrified teens shunned by society. 

The 1970-set novel Witchcraft for Wayward Girls introduces 15-year-old Neva Craven, left scared and confused as her irate father coldly drives her across state lines and unceremoniously deposits her in Florida’s Wellwood House, a strict and controlling place for people like Neva: unwed pregnant teens. Neva doesn’t learn until she’s abandoned by her family that she’s there to give birth in secrecy, far from her town’s prying eyes, and surrender the baby for adoption.

The idea, of course, is that life will resume as normal for Neva and her disgraced family once the evidence of her transgression has been thoroughly resolved. The arduous, painful process begins the day Neva arrives, where she’s renamed Fern and given a fake background, joining similarly renamed pregnant teens Rose, Zinnia, and Holly, among others. The girls bond over Wellwood House’s cruelty and oppressive lack of agency, commiserating over the powerlessness of their situation. That’s precisely when Fern comes upon How To Be A Groovy Witch, a cryptic, worn paperback that offers the girls power like they’ve never experienced before.

By the time the book lands in Fern’s possession, Wayward Girls has already painted Wellwood House as a grim house of horrors of its own merit. It’s less a boarding school and more of a prison for its unlucky tenants, many too young to even understand what changes their bodies are undergoing, let alone the physical horrors of giving birth. There’s rarely a trace of empathy to be found within the creaking, groaning walls of the Floridian home, either, as the adults treat them as incarcerated felons unworthy of kindness. Wayward girls are, after all, a blight on polite society, a dirty secret to be kept hidden away under lock and key.

The House’s callous and grim proprietor, condescending doctor, and prickly staff all feel deserving of comeuppance in some form so that by the time a magical book lands in Fern’s hands, it brings an initial sigh of relief and hope that the power imbalance can be restored in some way. So much so that it falsely sets up the expectation that Hendrix might borrow from The Craft; Fern and her three friends deserve to call up the four corners to smite this rotten bunch of adults, surely.

Yet that would be too tidy and easy. Hendrix isn’t interested in retreading that familiar story, nor rewrite history. Instead, Wayward Girls maintains an unflinching eye on the horrific treatment of these girls and sometimes the even more heartbreaking reasons they wind up in places like Wellwood House. Witchcraft dangles exhilarating relief, only to violently rip it away with harrowing new consequences that further plunge Fern and friends into darkness. What begins as the start of a vengeance story through supernatural means instead slowly transforms into a harrowing tale of survival.

Driving home the girls’ relentless plight is the constant body horror. Witchcraft demands a price, often through blood and self-harm, yet it pales in comparison to the physical horrors of giving birth; Hendrix dedicates pages to demonstrating the gory, painful details of childbearing from ill-prepared mothers. Stephen King famously captured the abject terror of young Carrie White experiencing her first period, and Hendrix stretches that acute feeling over the course of an entire novel on a much larger scale. Of course, the body horror here isn’t exclusively pregnancy-related; expect to wince in sympathy over grotesquely broken fingernails, eviscerated tongues, and more.

There’s a solemn maturity to Wayward Girls matching its primal horror. While its witchcraft plotline feels a bit too neatly wrapped up by the novel’s end and one supporting character comes perilously close to a tired trope, though perhaps befitting of the era, Hendrix gives precedence and utmost weight to giving a voice to a specific generation of silence women. Levity doesn’t come in the form of Hendrix’s usual lighthearted wit but in the tender friendships formed by teens trapped in an unthinkable nightmare. It’s those friendships and the immediacy of their loss of agency that drives Wayward Girls, giving it rich complexity right through to its emotionally satisfying conclusion. It’s an affecting journey that casts a harrowing spotlight on a more insidious corner of history and immerses with its powerful portrayal of rebellion.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls publishes January 14, 2025.