Synopsis
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, 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. There, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to keep her baby and escape to a commune. Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Every moment of their waking day 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.
Review
Wow. I don’t know what was more horrifying. The witch part, those calling themselves ‘carers’, or the childbirth.
I need you to understand what they did to us when we were girls. That’s the important thing you have to remember. We were unsocialized girls, fast girls, loose girls, emotionally immature girls, girls who grew up too fast.
We were girls. That’s what they called us in their articles and their speeches and their files: bad girls, neurotic girls, needy girls, wayward girls, selfish girls, girls with Electra complexes, girls trying to fill a voil, girls who needed attention, girls with pasts, girls from broken homes, girls who needed discipline, girls desperate to fit in, girls in trouble, girls who couldn’t say no.
After getting pregnant at 15, she is sent to a Home in disgust and secrecy and renamed Fern, disconnected from her previous life until she gives birth.
Set at the start of the 70s, Hendrix is masterful at showcasing the issues of the time. From the stigma surrounding pregnancy, racism, religion and morality, the changing values and increasing violence, the health system, the failing support system…
Per usual, Hendrix’s writing is addicting. Even though the true ‘witchy’ part doesn’t get introduced until page 116, there is a constant horror at the treatment of the girls, the attitudes, and the perceptions of their changing bodies.
Their bodies reshaped themselves with each passing minute, their bellies becoming bloody cauldrons brewing babies-dendrites blossoming like slow-motion fireworks, cells filling with triacylglycerols, placentas filtering oxygen from red blood cells. All of it happening in the dark, hidden away inside them.
Should a man be writing about experiences only women have?
Personally, I don’t think authors should be limited to narratives; otherwise, stories that need to be told won’t be. It is clear that he has done a lot of research.
At the start, I was disgusted by the way Fern described her own body. After finishing the book, I believe this is deliberate. There wasn’t enough communication, information, or sharing.
This wasn’t an edge-of-your-seat, gritting-your-teeth-all-the-time horror, yet it was a more realistic horror; a portrayal of the realistic nature of a dark part of American history, which isn’t that far in our past.
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