Leila Mottley

From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle. Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck. The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood. Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

A Novel

The Girls Who Grew Big

Lindsay

I realized it didn't matter what I was running from or to as much as it mattered that I finally pulled my feet from the sand and moved with purpose.

I didn't mind though, because I was used to impermanence and the art of letting go, always chasing something new. It was part of what made me great. I was unattached. I was willing to soar from one end of a pool to the other and only care about those seconds it took me to glide. Of course, what comes with having friends who you always suspect will dispose of you is having to remind yourself not to look like you care too much. Once you master the craft of pretending you have no stake in this life of yours, or these people who disguise themselves with the face of loving you, you eventually start to believe you actually don't care at all.

You can't give up on yourself, or you're just like every other mother who thinks she's choosing her baby when she's really choosing her own fear.

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