The Monsters We Make: A Novel

About this book

For fans of Rene Denfeld and Shari Lapena comes a rich atmospheric family drama set in the 1980s following the disappearances of two paperboys from a small midwestern town. Its August 1984 and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing. Hours later twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route red-faced and out of breath hiding a terrible secret. Crystal Sammys seventeen-year-old sister is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town. Officer Dale Goodkind cant believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it wont go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways Dale is forced to face his own demons. Told through interwoven perspectives--and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980s--The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends families and sometimes even themselves.