Growing Wild Books in Order

Growing Wild is Palessa stepping into historical women's fiction, and Eyubea Girls sets the tone clearly. This is a series opener built less around sweeping history from above and more around what life feels like for a young woman dropped into a place she did not choose. The result is a story about survival, education, and self-possession, with romance and danger both tied up in the same marriage.

At the center is Lisbette Caldwell, just seventeen and not ready to surrender the life she imagined for herself. She wants room for her own interests, including football, and dreams of becoming a teacher like her father. Instead, she is pushed into marriage with Graham Tate-Fuller and taken to Eyubea, a small independent township in southern Africa.

It is a marriage plot, but not a soft one.

Once Lisbette arrives, the book turns into something bigger than a fish-out-of-water romance. She becomes an assistant teacher to a small group of girls whose futures seem narrowed in advance to marriage and duty. At the same time, she has to reckon with the darker side of her husband's character and with the fact that his past has followed them into this new life.

That mix gives the story its tension. Eyubea is not just a backdrop. Because it sits apart from the colonial rule surrounding much of the region, the setting carries its own sense of isolation, possibility, and risk. Lisbette is an outsider there, but she is also forced to grow up quickly, learning which rules can be bent, which ones are dangerous, and how far she is willing to go to protect herself and the girls around her.

As a first book, Eyubea Girls suggests that Growing Wild is interested in women who have been boxed in by marriage, custom, or geography and then pushed to fight for a wider life. The historical setting matters, but the story stays close to daily realities: teaching, power inside a household, the vulnerability of young women, and the stubborn hope that knowledge can open a door. It is thoughtful without feeling distant.

Lisbette is not written as a grand heroine from the start.

She is young, frightened, stubborn, and learning as she goes, which is a big part of why the book works. Her coming-of-age runs alongside a more dangerous struggle for safety and independence, so the emotional stakes stay personal even when the setting feels large.

If this is the kind of historical fiction you like, grounded, character-led, and more interested in women's choices than in costume drama polish, Growing Wild is an inviting place to begin. Right now the series starts with Eyubea Girls, and that first book gives you a clear idea of Palessa's approach: vivid setting, real pressure, and a heroine who has to build her own strength in hard conditions.