56 pages • 1 hour read
Grady HendrixWitchcraft for Wayward Girls
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2025A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book Club Questions
General Impressions
Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.
1. What were your overall impressions of this book’s engagement with the history of women’s reproductive rights in the United States? Did you find any aspects of this history surprising?
2. Which of the girls’ backstories created the most powerful impression for you? What aspects of their plights resonate, and why?
3. Compare this title with The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2020), The Final Girl Support Group (2021), How to Sell a Haunted House (2023), or any of Hendrix’s other novels. What points of connection and common themes can be found across Hendrix’s works?
Personal Reflection and Connection
Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.
1. Reflect on Fern, Rose, and Zinnia’s experiences with forced adoption. How are their plights relevant to modern-day social issues that you have come across in your own experience?
2. Do you know anyone who was adopted or who gave up their child for adoption? How did their experience compare to those depicted in the novel?
3. How are family responses to teen pregnancy depicted in the novel?
4. How are societal attitudes toward teen pregnancy different today than they were during the era in which this novel is set? Conversely, what aspects of this social stigma still persist?
5. What life lessons do the girls learn from practicing witchcraft?
Societal and Cultural Context
Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.
1. How does this novel critique current debates surrounding women’s health and the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade?
2. How do the various social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s inform this novel?
3. What kind of support and education is standard for teenage mothers-to-be today that was not available to girls in the 1970s? Which of the characters could have been successful parents, and why?
Literary Analysis
Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.
1. Compare and contrast Rose and Zinnia. How do their personalities and interests reflect different aspects of 1970s society?
2. Consider Miss Wellwood. What drives her to pursue her role at the home, and how do the events of the novel expose her hypocrisy?
3. Analyze Hendrix’s choice to partially villainize practitioners of witchcraft. How does this decision undermine the novel’s early depiction of witchcraft as a potential source of empowerment for women?
4. How do the words and actions of the novel’s minor characters reflect The Social Stigma of Teen Pregnancy?
5. In the reunion at the novel’s conclusion, how have the characters changed, and what aspects of their personalities and beliefs have endured?
Creative Engagement
Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.
1. Would this novel make a good movie? Who would you cast in the lead roles? Explain the reasoning behind your choices.
2. Create a story around the formation and practices of Miss Parcae’s coven. Who are these women, and what experiences might have brought them together in such a unique way?
3. Imagine a sequel to this novel. What would happen to Fern, Rose, and Zinnia as they navigated relationships with their lost children?
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