Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates about a group of teenage girls in upstate New York in the 1950s who form a gang called Foxfire. The book takes the form of a memoir by Madeleine "Maddy" or "Monkey" Wirtz. Maddy is a fifty-year-old astronomer's assistant, but as a young girl was one of the five original members of Foxfire. This group included Betty "Goldie" Siegfried, Loretta "Lana" Maguire, Elizabeth "Rita" O'Hagan, and their leader, Margaret "Legs" Sadovsky. The girls all grew up together in the fictional town of Hammond, New York (the same setting Oates used for her 1990 novel Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart). Legs is an athletic, charismatic girl with feminist ideals about female pride and solidarity.