Wayward Girls (2025) is a work of women’s fiction by Susan Wiggs. Wayward Girls begins in 1968 with the story of Mairin O’Hara and a group of friends who band together and ultimately escape the emotional and physical abuse at a Catholic institution called the Home of the Good Shepherd located in Buffalo, New York. 50 years later, the wayward girls reunite to expose the secrets they’ve suffered with for decades and come to terms with the past. The novel examines The Cost of Contravening Social Norms, The Healing Power of Accepting the Past, and The Legacy of Institutionalized Violence.

Wiggs is the author of over 50 novels of historical fiction, historical romance, and contemporary women’s fiction.

The guide uses the 2025 William Morrow hardcover edition. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of child abuse; emotional abuse; physical abuse; rape; sexual violence and harassment; antigay bias; gender discrimination; substance use; suicidal ideation; racism.

Plot Summary

A Prologue set in Buffalo, New York, in 2020 shows an adult woman, Everly Lasko, trying and failing to locate her pre-adoption birth certificate from 50 years ago. She was adopted out of a girls’ home that no longer exists.

Book 1 begins in the summer of 1968, when Mairin O’Hara is 15 and looking forward to the school year. Mairin’s life changes when she learns that her best friend, Fiona, is pregnant and is being sent away to have the baby in secret, while her older brother, Liam, has been drafted to fight in the war in Vietnam. After Mairin’s stepfather, Colm, attempts to assault her, Mairin’s mother, a staunch Irish Catholic, gives Mairin into the care of the Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns who run the Home of the Good Shepherd. The home is for “wayward girls” who have no family, have been taken from or cannot be with their families, or who have been sent there as juvenile delinquents by the courts.

Mairin hates the place, with its strict discipline and the frequent punishments, from hair pulling, denial of food, to shutting girls in a small closet next to the main office. While she is shut in the closet after one of her many attempts to escape, Mairin overhears the Mother Superior discussing with one of the younger nuns, Sister Bernadette, where to hide cash payments that they do not turn over to the larger Catholic diocese. Sister Bernadette was removed from an unfit home by the Sisters of Charity and has found stability and security in her place there, but she feels compassion for the girls and wonders if the strictness of the older nuns, or their punishments, is correct.

As a year elapses, Mairin grows close with several of the girls and learns of their circumstances. Kay, who has developmental disabilities, is a ward of the state. Kay takes joy in feeding breadcrumbs to a mouse in their dormitory, until a nun finds the mouse and kills it. Janice and Denise have come from the foster care system, which they report is harsher than the Good Shepherd, where the girls are made to work in the laundry facilities all day instead of being in school. Helen’s parents are visiting China and have been detained there due to the Cultural Revolution. Odessa was arrested after joining a group of Black protestors who were accused of instigating violence, and the court sent her to stay at the Good Shepherd where she will remain until she is 18.

Angela’s situation is the most distressing. When her grandmother found out Angela is attracted to girls, Gran sent Angela to the Home of the Good Shepherd so the nuns could “reform” her. In “corrective” sessions she has been forced to undergo with Dr. Gilroy, Gilroy has raped her repeatedly and Angela is now pregnant. When she goes into labor, the nuns take her to a nearby hospital where she is drugged, gives birth, and then is told the child died. When Bernadette is given files to hide, however, she notes a certificate of live birth among the documents.

The girls bond together to endure the harsh environment and take refuge in small acts of solidarity and rebellion. They cut their hair so the nuns can’t pull it and play secret games of mahjong. On the Fourth of July 1969, the girls take a field trip to Niagara Falls and make a pact they will try to meet there in the future. Mairin suggests they work together to escape, and the girls devise a plan. They steal street clothes from the laundry, and Mairin sneaks into the front office to steal the cash that has been hidden away. 

In August, during the monthly visit of the bookmobile, six of the girls sneak into the library van and Mairin drives it away. When the police spot them, they abandon the van and run. Having escaped, Mairin uses the dime that Fiona’s older brother Flynn gave her earlier and calls him for help. Flynn picks Mairin up and takes her to a commune called Heyday Farm, where Mairin works in return for room and board.

In the following years, Mairin slowly builds a life on her own terms. She reconciles with her mother and learns that her mother gave birth at a Magdalene laundry in Limerick, Ireland. She came to Buffalo to find the child she was forced to give away and instead met Mairin’s father, who died when Mairin was 10. When Flynn buys Heyday Farm, he and Mairin marry. Mairin finds Angela during the Fourth of July at Niagara Falls, and the two women keep in touch, both of them wounded by their time at the Good Shepherd.

In Book 2, Mairin is preparing to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary to Flynn when she learns that Odessa has just published a book. Mairin contacts Angela, who feels ready to confront what happened to her all those years ago. Mairin and Angela reunite with Odessa, then Helen. Together, the women confront Sister Bernadette and, with her help, find the birth certificate that Sister Bernadette hid years ago. With this document, Angela tracks down Everly, who is the daughter Angela was told had died, and the women have an emotional reunion in which Angela meets Everly’s daughter, Violet.

Taking courage from these discoveries, Angela brings a court case against the Sisters of Charity, determined to expose the abuse inflicted on her. Mairin, who supports Angela throughout the case, finds her own healing in coming to terms with what she, too, suffered while at the Good Shepherd. When Angela wins her case, Mairin oversees a gathering at her farm in which she reflects on the accomplishments of her life and how she feels enriched by knowing these other wayward girls.