The Girls Who Grew Big A Novel

From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times best seller 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 is sixteen years old. When she tells her parents she's pregnant, they send her from their home in Indiana to her grandmother’s in Padua Beach, Florida, "a town built on y’all bein' good now? and babies havin' babies, said in the rasp of a loud whisper and one polite little shake of the head." There, Adela meets Emory, who has a baby of her own she brings to high school, strapped to her chest; and Simone, ringleader of “the Girls,” young moms who hang out with their growing brood in the back of her red truck—dancing defiantly, breastfeeding, watching each other’s backs. The town thinks they’ve lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood. Before long they will find themselves on a collision course with one another.

An uplifting novel, 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.

LEILA MOTTLEY is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times best seller, and the poetry collection woke up no light. She is also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live.