Many of Grady Hendrix‘s books remix classic horror ideas in order to develop fresh new lore, from vampires (“The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires”), haunted houses (“How to Sell a Haunted House”) and possessions (“My Best Friend’s Exorcism”). Yet his newest novel, the ambitious “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls,” out now via Berkley, is about witches, yes, but is inspired by dark stories from his family’s past.
In the novel, four teenage girls are sent to Wellwood House, a home for unwed mothers, in 1970, with the mandate to give birth, send the children away for adoption and pretend like nothing actually happened. Yet they are able to get back some of their agency once they learn witchcraft via a librarian who offers up a magical book.
Hendrix, who is also a former Variety writer, says he got the idea for “Girls” from a family history in which two beloved relatives were in a similarly unthinkable situation.
“I would say it’s not normal that a middle-aged childless man is going to write about a book where everyone is pregnant,” he says. “My whole family found out years ago that two relatives, both of whom are passed away now, were sent away when they were teenagers to homes from unwed mothers. None of us knew this until very late in their lives. One of them reunited with her child, the other never did. I remember thinking how astonishing that was that you could have a baby and never see them again. One of them was actually sent away at a time when conventional wisdom was that you had to feed your baby for a certain number of weeks after they were born before they were adopted. So she didn’t just have a baby, she raised them for five weeks afterward and then didn’t see her child again until she was in her ’70s. They had no idea if they were alive, dead, sick, happy. The craziness of that hit me.”
Hendrix continued learning more about the practice, which was so mainstream that around 190 homes were designated for unwed mothers during the so-called “Baby Scoop” era. Yet beyond historical research, he was also focused on touching base with scores of experts so he could accurately tell a story from the perspective of young women.
“I thought the only thing that’s going to save this book is being able to talk to people who are willing to be open about their experiences,” he says. “So I talked to about a dozen moms who told me about their birth stories. I talked to OBs. I talked to L&D nurses. I took online classes. I’ve got my Williams Obstetrics manual. There was a fantastic OB I worked with, but eventually, you could just see her responses to me getting terser and terser because I had so many questions. But I wanted to make sure I got that part right, and so much of it was so different than what I had assumed.”
Yet Hendrix says his former life as a journalist gave him the freedom to ask questions in pursuit of finding out the truth.
“You can talk to people and challenge your own assumptions,” he says. “You can be the idiot saying, ‘Explain this to me like I’m a dum-dum’ and really learn it. Weirdly, since I was a kid, I’ve been terrified of having a baby. Once it starts it doesn’t stop, and then you’re in there and there’s no way to make it go away. You can’t change your mind in the middle. After writing this book, I’m fascinated by it. If someone wants to tell me their birth story, I am all in, with a bowl of popcorn because I’m going to ask questions. It’s an incredible process. The part I like the most in writing books is doing the research and talking to people.”
And the novel is certain to get people talking in turn. Given that this story has been an idea in Hendrix’s head for years, there’s kismet that it’s being released amid political turmoil about women’s right to choose, due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. That, combined with a looming Trump presidency that could put more rights at risk, has created a recent influx of horror storytelling in which a woman’s bodily autonomy is a bigger point of fear than any monster could be.
“Because the book is set in 1970, my head was so set in 1970,” he says. “A lot of the current political discourse didn’t hit me. To read about the way we’ve always talked about unwed mothers and how unchanging it is from the 1920s, even from the 1890s through the 2000s up until now… code words get used: Welfare Moms, single-parent homes. It’s always about women who had a baby by themselves, and it’s always laying every problem at their doorstep. It’s relentless and it’s unforgiving, and the thing that astonished me is how much we take it for granted.”
Unfortunately, Hendrix still sees many direct parallels from the book in modern life.
“I just drove past a sign in South Carolina saying, ‘Looking for foster homes for pregnant teenagers,’” he says. “There was just a big New York Times story about maternity homes in Florida. This stuff is still with us, and to pretend it’s a relic of the past that we solved is kidding ourselves. Now that Roe has been turned back, I think it’s so much more immediate and in people’s faces.”
Beyond writing novels, Hendrix is active in filmmaking as well. He’s penned screenplays for two films — 2017’s “Mohawk,” which he wrote with Ted Geoghegan, and 2019’s “Satanic Panic” — and he’s currently working on a feature adaptation of his short story “Ankle Snatcher.”
Several of his novels are set for adaptation, with 2014’s “Horrorstör” in line for film development as well as upcoming TV adaptations of 2020’s “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires,” 2021’s “The Final Girl Support Group” and 2023’s “How to Sell a Haunted House.”
Hendrix can’t reveal too many details on the projects’ development, but confirms, “We all just got the next click of the wheel forward on all of those. Everything sort of moved forward a little bit, which is a huge relief, because there was a period where we just weren’t hearing anything from anyone.”
As for his next novel? It’s a total departure from “Witchcraft.”
“It’s a monster book,” he says. “A straight-up monster in the woods. There is not a single female character in it, which is very weird for me, but I don’t want to say too much because who knows what’s going to change on the road. But right now, monster in the woods and no girls allowed.”
But at the moment, Hendrix is thrilled to bring the women of Wellwood House to life for his readers — and himself.
“It’s some kind of weird, immersive thing, but every room in that maternity home, I’ve got either drawings or written descriptions of it,” he says. “I’ve got a written floor plan of that house. I’ve got the seating chart for how the girls sit around the dinner table because I have to see it to believe it. For the reader to believe it, I’ve got to believe it. I’ve gotta see it, I’ve gotta hear it and know what it smells like and all that. For me, it’s a visual, auditory, sensory experience. I’m really glad that comes across on the page. That’s the goal.”
