People talk about how “things were better” when they were growing up. Kids could play outside from dawn to dusk. They would leave the house after breakfast, run around the neighborhood with maybe a stop for lunch, and then return home either when Dad sounded the dinner whistle, or the streetlights came on. But then things changed, and children lost this freedom in their own neighborhoods and towns. Jess Lourey details this change in her latest novel, UNSPEAKABLE THINGS, and why children were kept closer to home in the northern Minnesota town of Lilydale.
The school year is coming to a close and Cassie and her friends are ready for summer break. In the months leading up to the end of the school year, some of the boys at her school have gone missing. When the boys are returned to their families, they are withdrawn and easily agitated. A city-wide curfew has gone into effect and the children are told not to stray too far from their homes. Cassie starts to identify clues about the abductions and tries her best to tell the adults her theories, but no one is listening to her. When the boy she has a crush on goes missing, Cassie takes the investigation into her own hands and risks her life to bring him home.
With UNSPEAKABLE THINGS, Lourey has channeled all of the best parts about Judy Blume’s books: the dogged determinedness of the young protagonist, the loss of childhood innocence. However, Lourey make it her own by putting her own dark spin on the story. The children in the book are left to their own devices to try to figure out what is happening in their small town. The adults in Lilydale are not the warm, caring authority figures the children need. For example, Cassie’s parents throw strange parties that no child should attend. The guest list for the parties is comprised of deviants from the surrounding area. This inability to trust the adults adds another layer of uncomfortableness to the book. Where can a middle school girl turn when she can’t trust the people she should?
Set in the 1980’s, Lourey weaves in the perfect amount of nostalgia in UNSPEAKABLE THINGS. Cassie and her sister watch the television show “Solid Gold”, she covets another girl’s tube of Avon lip gloss, and she thinks her crush is as handsome as Rick Springfield. This nostalgia for a simpler time makes the horror of the boys’ abductions that much more terrifying. Something this terrible should not happen in a time like this.
Lourey based the book on a real-life abduction that has held the imagination of the state of Minnesota since 1989. The abduction of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was the end of an era of innocence for the state. Children weren’t able to roam their neighborhoods from dawn to dusk and strangers were not trusted like they once were. Lourey perfectly captures this shifting sense of security and the creation of a new normal for children in UNSPEAKABLE THINGS.
Kate Malmon
