First published 2025
Mairin arrives at the Good Shepherd reform school in Buffalo during the turbulent year of 1968. Her Irish immigrant parents sent her there to protect her from her stepfather, but the institution proves far from safe. Five other teenage girls share her fate in the laundry rooms run by the Sisters of Charity nuns. Angela faces punishment for her attraction to other girls. Helen, daughter of intellectuals detained in Communist China, watches her temporary stay stretch into years. Odessa landed here after getting caught in a police dragnet during a racial incident. Denise earned her sentence by fighting in foster care. Janice struggles with divided loyalties except when it comes to her dependent friend Kay. Sister Bernadette oversees them, torn between her debt to the nuns who saved her from her own terrible childhood and her growing conscience. The six girls must find strength in each other as they endure the dark reality of their confinement and search for ways to break free from an institution that treats them as criminals for being gay, pregnant, or simply unruly.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, abuse, 20th-century, coming-of-age, adolescence
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, institutional-abuse
Setting: Buffalo, China, Good Shepherd Reform School
Period: 1968
390 pages · Kindle Edition · William Morrow
Content warnings: abuse, homophobia