Words leave imprints in your mind like footprints in the sand...
beach reading
starry skies to read under
reading in nature
  • Location: Florida

The Girls Who Grew Big

The Girls Who Grew Big

Why a Booktrail?

2024: The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.

  • ISBN: 978-0241705506
  • Genre: Familiy drama, Fiction

What you need to know before your trail

When Adela Woods tells her parents she’s pregnant, they immediately send her a thousand miles away to stay with her grandmother in Padua Beach. The intention is that she will leave her baby in ‘the forgotten Panhandle of Florida’. and resume her suburban life nine months later as though nothing happened. But Adela’s plans are soon washed away by the tide.

First, Adela meets Emory, a new mother determined to defy the expectations of everyone around her, returning to high school with her newborn baby strapped to her chest. Then she meets Simone, ringleader of ‘the Girls,’ a group of young mothers who create a village together in the back of her red truck—dancing, breastfeeding, raising their children and themselves.

The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.

But as they look for love, make and break friendships, navigate the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood, Adela, Emory and Simone also find themselves on an inescapable collision course with one another.

Travel Guide

Florida panhandle

The Florida panhandle is the north western part of the U.S. state of Florida. It is a salient roughly 200 miles long, bordered by Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its eastern boundary is arbitrarily defined.

The small town of Padua Beach, Florida is fictional but reminiscent of so many along the panhandle.

BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Girls Who Grew Big

Destination/location: Florida (panhandle)   Author/guide: Leila Mottley  Departure Time: 2024

Back to Results

Featured Book

Nephthys

1891: Sister. Rival. Protector. The spellbinding story of a forgotten daughter and a forgotten goddess.

Read more