“The Monsters We Make” by Kali White tells a fictionalized account of the Des Moines missing paper boys in the 1970’s. These missing person cases remain unsolved today but many hypothesize the kidnappings are somehow connected. 

Author Kali White is an Iowa native and she remembers growing up and hearing about these events on the news. White’s proximity to these events and familiarness with Iowa made her interpretations of these events extremely realistic and detailed.

Taking place over the course of a year, this story follows multiple characters as the reader tries to put a profile together on who is kidnapping these young boys and why. The book does mention and detail the topics of child abuse, pedophilia and sexual assault so please consider this before reading. 

White also explores how these missing child cases were investigated by law enforcement at the time. Decades ago, the vernacular used to describe pedophiles and child predators was not in common use. Because of this, many people didn’t recognize this was something that existed or could be happening in their community. 

Despite being a fictional interpretation of these high profile cold cases, White does a great job keeping up with detail and using actual facts in her writing to bring her story to life. She doesn’t shy away from entertaining a few actual conspiracies about the cases and lets her readers know more than some characters and less than others. Suspenseful and intense, this is a novel you will definitely want to check out.