Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Neva Craven, fifteen and six months pregnant, is driven from Alabama to Florida by her furious father, who treats her pregnancy as a family catastrophe to be hidden. On the punishing trip, Neva relives being abandoned by her boyfriend, Guy, and the way her parents shut her out of every decision. At a gas station, her father forces her to wear his wedding ring so strangers will assume she is married, making clear that appearances matter more than her safety.

They arrive at the Home for Unwed Mothers—Wellwood House—where Neva is processed by staff who enforce secrecy and shame. Miss Wellwood, the director, strips Neva of her identity, assigning her the name “Fern” and a fake hometown, and promises that total obedience will let her give up the baby, return home, and pretend nothing happened. Fern is placed in a room with Rose, a confrontational girl who refuses to be cowed, and Holly, a younger, silent girl with a birthmark who clings to a stuffed dog and seems neglected by everyone.

Fern learns the Home’s machinery: rigid schedules, controlled food and weight, moral lectures, and the constant push toward adoption. Dr. Vincent, the Home’s doctor, humiliates Fern with a rough exam. Immediately afterward, social worker Diane Keller persuades her to sign “surrender” papers, promising she will be drugged through birth and never have to face the baby. Fern signs under “Jane Doe,” seeing her father has already signed first.

Life at Wellwood is harsh and dehumanizing, and the girls are deliberately kept ignorant about labor. When Myrtle suffers a catastrophic, bloody labor in a bathroom, the staff remove her and publicly blame her disobedience, confirming to Fern that the adults lie and the girls are disposable. Fern’s isolation shifts when a new girl arrives late at night: Zinnia, a well-dressed Black teenager whose presence exposes racial tensions and the Home’s hypocrisies. Around the same time, Fern begins quietly bonding with Holly, who steals contraband and responds to small kindnesses.

During a bookmobile visit, Fern meets the librarian, Miss Parcae. Mrs. Deckle censors the girls’ choices, blocking anything that might teach them about sex or childbirth. When Fern asks for nonfiction on pregnancy, Miss Parcae instead demonstrates startling midwife skill by physically shifting Fern’s baby to relieve her pain. Before Fern leaves, Miss Parcae secretly slips her a thin paperback: How to Be a Groovy Witch.

Fern brings the book to Rose, Zinnia, and Holly. Skeptical but desperate, they try a “Turnabout” spell to transfer Zinnia’s constant vomiting onto someone else. They steal ingredients, use Zinnia’s blood on an egg, and plant a sachet containing hairs from Dr. Vincent inside his desk. When Fern times a clinic visit to test it, Dr. Vincent is suddenly overwhelmed by violent, uncontrollable vomiting—proof that the spell worked. Their brief triumph turns into frustration: the book is full of trivial charms and confusing rituals, and real power seems out of reach.

On a punishing Laundry Day, the girls encounter a huge black dog and are lured out at night to a moonlit river beyond the Home’s rules. There they swim and speak honestly about their pregnancies. Miss Parcae appears with identical black dogs and offers to teach them deeper witchcraft—but only in exchange for “eternal loyalty and complete obedience.” The girls initially resist. Then Holly breaks down and reveals the truth behind her terror: Reverend Jerry, the powerful founder of her church, has sexually abused her since childhood, and he plans to adopt her baby. “Going home” would mean returning to her abuser, and the adults at Wellwood will not protect her.

Determined to stop that outcome, the girls accept Miss Parcae’s initiation. By the river, they renounce God, reverse the Lord’s Prayer in a mangled chant, and sign Miss Parcae’s book in blood, focusing on a shared desire: Holly will not go back. Miss Parcae provides little guidance beyond insisting that power demands a price. The witch book itself begins to rewrite, adding new instructions as if answering their questions, which terrifies Zinnia. Meanwhile, Rose refuses to surrender her baby—until the system breaks her. Dr. Vincent and Diane force Rose to the hospital early, and Rose returns without her daughter, Blossom, admitting she was coerced into signing adoption papers under threat of the locked ward and a court declaring her incompetent.

Grief turns Rose toward vengeance. Following a black dog named Decima into the woods, Fern and Rose reach Miss Parcae’s hidden coven—women living on the run, guarded and distrustful, who speak of witch “lines” that carry inherited memories. Rose demands a spell to hurt the people who stole her child, and Miss Parcae agrees to teach her, separating Rose’s vengeful path from Fern’s goal of protecting Holly.

Back at Wellwood, Rose, Fern, and Holly perform a curse on Miss Wellwood, using a poppet linked to Wellwood’s belongings and paying a brutal price in blood and pain. The poppet burns into a fine brown powder, and after Rose leaves with her parents, Fern—torn between fear and loyalty—secretly gives Miss Wellwood the remaining dose in her coffee. Miss Wellwood grows volatile, then disappears from view. When Fern confronts Miss Parcae, she learns the spell is not meant to kill: it forces Miss Wellwood to experience what it was like to be Rose. Miss Parcae, dying of liver cancer, reveals she needs a successor to carry the coven’s “library” of living memory—and she intends to force Fern into becoming the next vessel in Hecate’s line.

Fern, Zinnia, and Holly seek help from Hagar Sunday, the Home’s hard-edged kitchen worker. Hagar burns the witch book, contains an unfinished storm spell in a knotted bottle, and tries to ward the house with silver and iron. The protections provoke retaliation: an unnatural storm builds into a rain of stones that shatters Wellwood and injures girls. When Miss Wellwood returns, she orders the wards removed and launches searches and crackdowns. Salt lines and Hagar’s protective red pouches briefly keep Miss Parcae out, but when Violet steals salt from the thresholds, Miss Parcae slips inside as Fern goes into early labor. Fern is rushed to the hospital, where her pouch is cut away and Miss Parcae appears again, trying to seduce her into surrendering her mind. Fern resists and gives birth under anesthesia. She is pressured to proceed with adoption; she briefly holds her newborn daughter and nearly changes her mind, but Diane warns her she will owe crushing medical fees if she keeps the baby. Fern chooses adoption, yet signs the birth certificate with her real name—N. Craven—rather than “Jane Doe.”

Returning to Wellwood hollowed out, Fern tries to disengage and go home, but Reverend Jerry arrives to claim Holly. On the eve of Fern’s departure, Holly goes into labor and refuses the hospital. Zinnia forces an escape by taxi to Hagar’s home, where Hagar and Miriam deliver Holly’s baby in a terrifying, obstructed labor and revive the newborn girl when she emerges limp. The victory lasts minutes: Nurse Kent, Dr. Vincent, Miss Wellwood, and police descend, seize the baby, and take Holly away. Fern is arrested.

Watching Reverend Jerry take Holly’s newborn, Fern breaks. She digs up the buried storm bottle, throws away her protective pouch, smashes the bottle, and mutilates her tongue to call Hecate with blood. After a dreadful delay, the storm explodes—devastating Wellwood and wrecking vehicles in the yard. In the aftermath, Miss Parcae confronts Fern to collect the “price.” Fern flees through the wreckage, finds Zinnia and Holly alive with the baby, and is cornered by the coven in the woods. Miss Parcae tries to force Fern to “carry the flame,” even summoning the Triple-Faced Goddess to overwhelm her consent. Fern refuses. Holly intervenes—attacking Miss Parcae and offering herself instead, choosing any monstrous transformation over returning to Reverend Jerry. The coven fractures, and the witches decide on mercy: they take Holly and her newborn into the woods, leaving Fern and Zinnia to be found by authorities and sent away, changed by what they survived and what they learned they could do.