Available Formats
Paperback, Large Print Edition
Published: 24th June 2025
Hardback
Published: 10th August 2025
Paperback
Published: 14th October 2025
The Girls Who Grew Big: A Novel
By (Author) Leila Mottley
Diversified Publishing
Random House Large Print
24th June 2025
Large Print Edition
United States
General
Fiction
Contemporary lifestyle fiction
Narrative theme: Coming of age
Paperback
512
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
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 grandmothers in Padua Beach, Florida, "a town built on yall 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 truckdancing defiantly, breastfeeding, watching each others backs. The town thinks theyve 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.