Truthers

Starred review from June 5, 2017
In this intense thriller, a young woman delves into the world of conspiracy theorists to help her father, who’s been remanded to a mental institution following a breakdown. Seventeen-year-old Katie Wallace is shocked when her father claims that she isn’t his daughter but is living proof of a government cover-up involving the 9/11 attacks. Though Katie doesn’t believe her father, her only hope of freeing him rests in finding some element of plausibility in his delusions. As her research brings her into contact with the truther movement and she uncovers shadowy clues and conflicting information, Katie wonders if she has stumbled across the sort of secrets people kill to hide. In exploring the complicated web of half-truths and audacious claims made by those who believe 9/11 was an inside job, Girard (Project Cain) takes readers down a disturbing, provocative path; both sides start to make sense as information is revealed and theories are debated. It’s a fast-paced nail-biter with a resourceful heroine, packed with surprises that force readers to question every revelation and take nothing at face value. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jess Regel, Foundry Literary + Media.

June 1, 2017

Gr 8 Up-High school student Katie Wallace is used to taking care of herself while her dad's off drinking away painful memories. So when the police show up at Katie's house one night, she's not at all surprised-until they tell her what he's done. Threatening a former vice president and raving about government conspiracies quickly land him in a mental institution, where he's heavily sedated and kept away from Katie. When she's finally able to see him, her dad has some shocking revelations to share: he knows what really happened on September 11, and Katie is his living proof. In order to free her dad, Katie dives headfirst into an investigation of 9/11 conspiracy theories, meeting some of her father's former military contacts, butting heads with government officials and private security companies alike, and making shady deals with "Truthers"-people convinced they know what the government is really up to. And the more entrenched Katie becomes in her research, the less sure she is about what to believe. Set in present-day Maryland, the novel walks a fine line between established fact and common conspiracy theory, and readers will question the truth right along with Katie. Girard has created a well-developed, quirky, tenacious main character for whom teens can't help but root. VERDICT A beautifully written, captivating must-have that will hook readers from beginning to end. Fans of mysteries, thrillers, and historical fiction will all find something to enjoy here.-Kaitlin Frick, New York Public Library

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017
A white, teenage girl is drawn into the shadowy world of 9/11 conspiracy theorists when her PTSD-afflicted veteran father gives her a cryptic set of clues. Katie Wallace comes home one day to discover that her single father has been taken to the hospital after attacking a co-worker. After being questioned by police, she is allowed to see her heavily sedated father, who is also being held by authorities for threats he made against the government. He reveals shocking news: that she is not his biological daughter and that she was given to him by a woman who died, along with many others, under suspicious circumstances on 9/11 in Cleveland. Armed with this spotty information, she begins to investigate her father's outrageous claims, assisted by new, white college friend Max Thompson. Max serves as a voice of reason while Katie finds herself almost believing her father after she is threatened and kidnapped and undergoes a past-life regression. Will Katie ever know if her father's story is "invented? True? A mixture too muddled to separate?" That statement is also an apt summary of this overplotted novel. Billed as a thriller, it reads instead like a slow-paced, densely written treatise on 9/11 conspiracy theories and rebuttals, voiced by cardboard characters whose main function is to pontificate. No truth here. (author's note, selected bibliography, websites) (Fiction. 14-18)

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August 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 Seventeen-year-old Katie Wallace's world crumbles the day her father, Scott, beats up a coworker and is taken to a mental hospital, claiming he knows the truth about the 9/11 attacks. After that, events move quickly, with Katie determined to obtain her father's release, and then, as she digs deeper, trying to find out what happened on that fateful day. Was it a hoax that she and Scott were involved in? If not, why are strange men following her, and what is it they want? Although there's lots that is implausible here, especially a scene in which Katie must decide whether to allow a government agent to be tortured, this moves at a fast clip, and readers will get caught up in both the conspiracy construct (actual Truther theories are explored) and the romance that is as tangled as the web of confusion surrounding 9/11. Readers may come away with just a few answers to the many questions the book poses, but for those who like their action stories with a political bent, this should satisfy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)