When We Were Feral

Thirteen-year-old Maggie lives in a trailer on the edge of a rural New Hampshire town, where her brother barely speaks, her father works double shifts at the gun factory, and her mother disappeared without a trace. She finds comfort in the warmth of her best friend Sarah’ s seemingly perfect family— until a classmate’ s mother goes missing, and the girls are drawn to Erin, the daughter left behind. Compelled by a need to understand what makes mothers vanish, Maggie convinces the others to search for answers in the woods and abandoned backroads. But a charged encounter with older boys shifts their path and challenges everything they thought they knew about themselves— and each other. Set in the early 1990s, When We Were Feral is a haunting coming-of-age story about friendship, longing, and the dangerous terrain between girlhood and adulthood. In a world where mothers vanish and truths stay buried, the girls begin to realize the wilderness they fear most isn’ t outside— it’ s within.

Shasta Grant grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in Indianapolis. An Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest winner, and recipient of writing residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project, she holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home and her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, wigleaf, and elsewhere.