Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck
Lindsay Starck lays bare every parent’s fear in her newest novel, MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE. When Sylvia Gray’s daughter, Faye, and her best friend attack their babysitter at the behest of the Kingman, a menacing internet figure who has a powerful influence over young people, they spend the rest of their childhoods in a juvenile facility. The crime destroys not only the family and the marriage, but Sylvia’s confidence in herself, leaving her to wonder what part she played in her daughter’s undoing.
After her release, Faye lives in a halfway house and wants nothing to do with her parents. When Faye goes missing, leaving a toddler behind, Sylvia enlists the help of her estranged husband and a sister whom she has not seen since Faye’s trial, to find her before it’s too late. She has read news reports of the Kingman’s return. He’s back and his darkness is encroaching on Faye and now Sylvia, too, it seems. She is terrified that she won’t be able to reach Faye before she or someone else is hurt.
MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE is a powerful literary novel of suspense that examines the boundaries of parenthood, the cost of love, and the influence of stories. A novel written for our time, when parents are being held accountable for the crimes of their children and we are examining the powerful and damaging sway social media has over our young people. Based loosely on the 2017 attack by a Waukesha teen who claimed to be under the influence of a fictional internet meme, the Slenderman, when she lured a classmate into the woods and repeatedly stabbed her, Starck examines the lives affected by such crimes, the victims and families and individuals who live in the after.
Listen to my interview with Lindsay Starck on Superior Reads on March 28 at 7pm and the 30th at 6am on WTIP Radio 90.7 Grand Marais, and on the web at www.superiorreads.com and www.wtip.org.
