First published 2025
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine during the scorching summer of 1970. She's pregnant, scared, and completely alone. The facility hides unwed mothers while they deliver babies in secret and surrender them for adoption. Miss Wellwood runs the home with an iron fist, controlling every meal, every conversation, every waking moment of the girls' lives. Fern meets other residents like Rose, a hippie determined to keep her child and flee to a commune, Zinnia, who plans to marry her baby's father, and Holly, a silent fourteen-year-old whose pregnancy remains a mystery. When a librarian slips Fern a book about witchcraft, the girls suddenly possess something they've never had before: real power. They can finally fight back against the adults who claim to know what's best for them. But this newfound strength comes with a terrible cost, and the price must be paid in blood.
Genres: fiction, abuse, 20th-century, contemporary, adoption, family-drama
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, power-dynamics
Setting: St. Augustine, Wellwood Home
Period: 1970
482 pages · Hardcover · Berkley
Content warnings: abuse, pregnancy-loss