I grew up in the era of stranger danger. I was a generally anxious child even on my best days, a veritable nightmare on my worst; my family loves to tell the story of my weeping refusal to approach Santa Claus at a school event, unable to recognize the costumed man as my own father.
Kali White’s The Monsters We Make (2020) plays with the primal fear of the threat strangers pose, following the lives of three people impacted by local kidnappings. The novel’s main undercurrents—the public versus the private, the community versus the individual, the concepts of victimhood versus survivorship —all circle the growing dread of an unsafe world. White constructs an atmospheric mystery that burns slowly until it is too late.
On its surface, The Monsters We Make is a story about two kidnappings, two years apart, inspired in part by the Des Moines paperboy kidnappings of the 1980s. The book does not follow the impacted families, instead following Dale Goodkind, a police officer investigating the cases, and the adolescent Cox siblings, who live in the same neighborhood as the most recent crime. It quickly becomes apparent that the novel is using the missing children as a backdrop for a serial child predator’s heinous acts.
White performs impressive feats of juxtaposition and mirroring, showing both the repetitiveness of history and the sharpness small changes can make. Dale Goodkind and Sammy Cox are bookends for the cycle of abuse, both hiding their traumas from loved ones. Their experiences are hauntingly explored through italicized dialogue and lingering, innocuous imagery. It is only when the reader pairs these descriptions with a broader understanding of the world that they can see the true horror that is being described.
Dale’s loneliness in his trauma is highlighted by the presence of Crystal Cox, Sammy’s older sister, and her desire to understand her brother. Crystal stands on the cusp of childhood, her loss of innocence gradual. Crystal’s bildungsroman is based on her brother’s horror; the reader can do nothing but watch as the Cox children are jettisoned into adulthood while steeped in tragedy.
The book aches with its desire to place us in time, to the point that time itself becomes a character. Long after the setting has been established, time winks at the reader, be it the presence of jelly shoes or specific advertisement campaigns. The setting radiates Midwest suburbia to the point of toxicity, perfectly reflecting White’s thesis: The known is even more of a threat than the unknown, and everyone is at risk.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s January 2025 issue.
