"Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson goes a long way to showing what investigative journalism could be in the right hands . . . this book is undeniably buzzworthy." --Portland Book Review
"An absorbing and unnerving read . . . this book demands to be finished in one sitting." --
Booklist "One of the must-read books of this century."
--Gillian Flynn, #1
New York Times bestselling author of
Gone Girl Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud.
In 1971,
Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict,
Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later,
Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise:
A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
But
Alice was only the beginning.
In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist,
Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis--adolescent suicide--to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities.
In reality,
Go Ask Alice and
Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards.
Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire.
Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.
