‘The Monsters We Make’

Browsing books out for release this year, I came upon one I was conflicted about. It was a novel about paperboys going missing in Iowa.

Now, I am from Eastern Arkansas and know about the case of The West Memphis Three as much as the next person. I interviewed Mara Leveritt in Memphis years ago when she penned her story about it with 'Devil's Knot.' Subsequently, a movie came out of that work. I even bumped into the investigating detective on the case at a tire store one day, when someone dropped his name in my hearing. He shared a few thoughts with me that he had about the case.

Like I said, I like whodunits. Only, crimes against children is so abhorrentespecially ones such as the Robin Hood Woods slaughter- that occurred way too close to home years ago.

But, I persevered and got a copy of 'The Monsters We Make' which the author, Kali White, provided for me. I finished it and followed up with a request for an interview.

“Wow. You read fast!” she replied.

(No, really I don't. I only read fast when I find a book interesting.) And her book was.

I shared with Kali about my interview with Leveritt years ago and asked her why she wrote on a similar subject.

“The missing paperboy stories have haunted my conscious to some degree since I was nine years old when Eugene Martin went missing. It was August 12, 1984, my sister's 14th birthday, and my family was staying just blocks away from Eugene's abduction site for a weekend vacation. I was a smalltown farm kid and had a fairly sheltered childhood, so major crimes just weren't in my purview, let alone kids getting kidnapped off street corners.

And it wasn't until I became an adult and a parent myself that I started to understand the true historical impact of those cases on adults of my generation, how it affected our parenting habits and mindsets, making us far more paranoid and vigilant than previous generations. That's what got me thinking about a story.”

And she brings a good story with a considerable investment of time and energy.

The Monsters We Make is her third novel-her first two novels were published under her married name, Kali VanBaale. But with TMWM, she was writing in a new genre, crime fiction, and with a new publisher, so it made sense to write under her maiden name, Kali White.

“Compared to my first two novels,” she explains, “I did the most research for TMWM. Several months' worth. I read hundreds of archived newspaper and magazine articles, watched documentaries, interviewed multiple people either involved in the cases in some way or who had personal abuse and abduction stories to share, did deep internet dives into amateur sleuthing discussion forums, etc… I thought it was important to learn as much as I could about the three Des Moines cases, about missing children investigations in the 80s and their historical contexts, and about the psychology of child abuse in general.”

Kali also certainly knows how to pique the reader's curiosity.

And in this story, she hooked me big time.

It was when I read the sentence, “He knew he was never supposed to run away.”

That was the 'hook' in Chapter One that grabbed my attention.

Because…(as they used to say on Sesame Street)… one of these words does not belong. That word in this case was 'never' which suggested an on-going relationship with the abuser.

And I knew I was hooked.

So, I asked the author about it.

“Abusers often control ongoing abusive relationships with “rules,” (she wrote) “Whether spoken or silently understood, and I knew this would be a major factor for Sammy's character in what pushes him to a critical breaking point by the end. And for kids, “rules” that carry frightening consequences and punishment exert even more power. When I wrote the line, “He knew he was never supposed to run away” and used the word “never,” I knew that by the end of the story, Sammy would somehow take back the power wielded over him. He would break the “never” rule.”

And with the horrific atmosphere of the neighborhood, the electricity in the air, White finds different ways of approaching her characters and how they react.

With Crystal (the sister of her abused brother, Sammy) we find a sympathetic girl.

She is eighteen and as with a sister, sees her younger brother as basically useless. Sammy plays the basic slub: Fat, lazy, complaining and short in the smarts department.

But he knows enough to know he is being actively tortured.

I brought up the subject of Crystal, the eighteen yearold looking to make her own future with the odds against her-daddy divorced her mom, who is a single mother, stressed out just

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Kali White BOOK REVIEW (cont.)

trying to make ends meet.

So, I ask about Crystal, as a sympathetic axis for all else to swirl around.

“I know about that, …I thought of her as a moral center of sorts for the story. The anchor. Even though she wants truth and justice, to be a part of something bigger and better than herself, she's still young and inexperienced in life, and it's this inexperience that blinds her to what's happening to her own brother.

It's a failure of imagination. “For Dale (the investigating detective on the case) it's the opposite. His life experiences

what's blinding him: His childhood trauma and the clinging failure of a previously unsolved missing child case.”

Indeed, the investigation of the missing kids seemed haphazard-even sloppy, or worse yet: apathetic.

White's real-life research reflects her understanding of these matters.

Using the real paperboy cases from the 1980s as inspiration for her fictional cases definitely created opportunity to show how backwards and illogical missing children investigations were in that era.

When Johnny Gosch went missing in 1982, there was still a mandatory 48-hour waiting period to file a missing persons report, even for a minor.

Now, White explains, there has been an evolution in such matters.

“Changes only happened because of these cases and the advocacy of the parents of these missing boys and other missing children nationwide from that era.

Most law enforcement agencies now have departments designed to handle special cases like these, such as a Crimes Against Persons (CAP) unit like the Des Moines Police Department created, or a Special Victims Unit.

“In my view, though, one of the most important developments from these cases in the 80s was the creation of the national Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Noreen Gosch, Johnny's mother, was one of the people heavily involved in helping to build it, and that organization really changed the landscape for missing children

what a shock!

The problem…is that perpetrators are all too human,” explains the author.

“They most often look and behave perfectly normal.

They're “nice guys” or “good neighbors.” And, they look and act like us.

And it's in this disconnect that we can inadvertently allow the actual perpetrators to hide in plain sight.” Which gives the whole package for a reader to unpack. A mystery, complete with nail biting and requisite chills.

Readers and book clubs can connect with Kali at www. kaliwhite. com/ bookclubs and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @ kaliwriting.