7/15/25; 400 pages
William Morrow
Wayward Girls by Susan Wiggs is a highly recommended
historical fiction novel set mainly in 1968 with the opening and ending
in more contemporary times. The bulk of the novel is set in the Good
Shepard Refuge in Buffalo, NY. It claimed to be a reform school but was
really a Magdalene laundry where the girls there were forced to work and treated cruelly by the Sisters of Charity nuns in charge.
There is a list of the main characters in the description to help readers follow who is who. The novel mainly focuses on six teens. Mairin is the main character and the bulk of the novel unfolds through her point-of-view. After her brother is drafted, she is committed there when she is 15 by her mother and stepfather to keep her safe from her stepfather. The five other teens introduced include Angela, Helen, Odessa, Denise, and Janice. The reasons the girls were sent there does feel a bit like boxes needed to be checked for current sensibilities. There are also chapters following the point-of-view of a young nun, Sister Bernadette.
The novel is compelling, especially following the ordeals the girls
experienced while at Good Shepard as it is based on a real place. Later
in the novel, after the teens get out, the plot is still interesting but
loses much of it's intensity. Now it is a young woman determined to
find her way to a future but without much of the ardor displayed
earlier. It also becomes more of a women's fiction novel. You will want
the women to get some justice for what happened to them as teens.
Wayward Girls will be best appreciated by readers who enjoy women's historical fiction. Thanks to William Morrow for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
