Witchcraft and reproductive rights: The horror of Grady Hendrix's latest novel

Fans of novelist Grady Hendrix know him for the campy (in the best way), even whimsical vibes he brings to the horror genre.

In books like "Horrorstör," my personal favorite of his works, you get classic haunted house-style scares — in IKEA (actually, it's IKEA competitor ORSK, which sells everything from side tables to torture devices). Hendrix uses this unusual setting to center the malaise of workers stuck in unfulfilling jobs.

That's Hendrix's magic power, if you will. He's skilled at taking horror tropes and turning them into vehicles for more. More societal critique. More lifelike characters. And in the case of his latest book, more empathy.

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"Witchcraft for Wayward Girls" is, in its most basic form, about unwed teenage mothers who are sent away to a "home" in Florida where they find a coven of witches in the woods. That's the short, fun version.

The longer version comes from this nation's not-so-distant history, when an estimated 2 million children were born to women and girls in maternity homes and taken away to be put up for adoption. The practice persisted from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s, right around the time Roe v. Wade was decided.

In the acknowledgements of "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls," Hendrix answers the first question I had as I read: What made him equipped to tell this story?

When I sat down with Hendrix before his recent visit to Seattle's Third Place Books, I was grateful to know I wouldn't have to hex him. He'd done his homework. More than that, he'd uncovered a painful American story that had touched his own family once upon a time.

(You can listen to our conversation by hitting the play button above, by the way!)

"I discovered two relatives of mine had both been sent away when they were teenagers," Hendrix told me. "I was in my 20s when I learned this. And it really blew me away that both these women I was very close to, both were in their 70s around then, they never talked about this before."

That set him on a course to learn more, including from Ann Fessler's "The Girls Who Went Away."

"I read that book, and I thought, 'There's a story here,'" he said. "These girls who were sent to these homes, trapped there with no information, no one to rely on but each other, and they don't even know each other's names, because everyone had a pseudonym to protect their 'privacy.' And for years, I just knew I wasn't good enough to tackle this book."

The idea stayed with him, though, until finally — "probably foolishly" — he began the work of writing "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls" with an army of women and medical professionals behind him. Together, they made the experience of Hendrix's main characters — Fern, Zinnia, Holly, and Rose — painfully real, and they helped bring the magic into their story.

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"The first two [drafts] didn't even have witches in them, because I'm an idiot," Hendrix said. "It was like a folk horror book... and my editor was saying to me, 'You know, the book's not really coming together.' And I was like, 'I know, I know. I can't figure out what's wrong.' She said, 'Well, you know, it does say witch in the title, and there are no witches in it. So, it might help if some witches made an appearance.'"

And what an appearance it would turn out to be.

The head witch, Miss Parcae, comes to the girls first as the librarian in the summer book mobile. In a seemingly innocent effort to give the pregnant girls some agency in their powerless situation at Wellwood House, she sneaks a copy of "How To Be A Groovy Witch" to Fern. As the girls experiment with the spells in its pages — first turning Zinnia's morning sickness onto their misogynistic doctor — they learn what it means to wield this new power.

"There are so many versions of a witch, and most of it comes down to how comfortable you are with women in power," Hendrix said. "If you are uncomfortable, then a woman who's a witch is a cannibalistic, baby-eating, Satan-worshipping monster. And if you're comfortable with women in power, she is a freedom-fighting, moon-worshiping, powerful goddess figure. I wanted to get somewhere where they could be both at the same time."

I was struck by Hendrix's decision to make the head witch a librarian, and by the message that seemed to send in exchanges like this one:

"Like witches, librarians are there to give people information when they need it," Hendrix said. "They help people fill out job applications. They help people apply for government benefits. They help people get health care. They help people translate documents. They help people register to vote. They do so much, and they are always underfunded and understaffed. And you know, there are two public goods left in our world, and one is public parks and the other is public libraries. Those are two places anyone can go and get what they need, whether it's some peace and quiet, a place out of the rain, or some information. And I do worry if we're gonna have those public spaces in 10 years."

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But this construction, in the conversation between Fern and Miss Parcae, is echoed in another conversation Fern has later with another witch, who has just described the many ways in which they'd been hunted and hurt for generations:

"Women are always, when you come to political issues, they're always at the back of the line over and over again," Hendrix said. "It's something, if you have eyes, you can't help but notice. One of the reasons I write horror is I like to write about the world around me. ... And to write about the world around you, you've got to see it and you've got to observe it."

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What I observed in this book was an author who wanted to talk about a terrible thing in our recent history, about the girls whose families saw them as shameful, and about the babies who were taken away whether their mothers wanted that or not. I observed the kind of horror that is made possible by human cruelty, as well as the kind of joy that is made possibly by human resilience.

I can't say I would've immediately guessed Hendrix wrote "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls" if his name wasn't on the cover. But in the way he took these girls' experience seriously and the care he took to make them real, I observed what makes Hendrix's work stand out from most other horror writers: empathy and the power it has to make reality magical.

Listen to our conversation by hitting the play button at the top of this page.