In The Kids Are Gonna Ask, the funny, fast-paced, multi-format second novel from Gretchen Anthony (Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners), a well-intentioned quest to uncover a family secret upends the lives of two Midwestern teens and their grandmother when their story goes viral.
When Bess McClair came home pregnant after a ski trip her senior year of college and decided to become a single mother, her mother, Maggie, welcomed the distraction from her grief over the recent death of her husband. She didn't pressure Bess to identify the father of the babies, fraternal twins Savannah and Thomas. Thirteen years later, Bess died in a freak accident, leaving Maggie and the kids no way to find the "biodad."
Now 17, the McClair twins run an amateur podcast notable for spawning the Internet phenomenon Zombie Baby. Studio owner Sam Tamblin listens to the breakout episode, in which Thomas mentions wishing he could meet his father, and offers to produce a podcast about the twins' search for him. Maggie, who still has imagined conversations with Bess and believes that "sometimes, fate works on people like a warm morning breeze," hesitantly gives her blessing. When paternity privacy activists get wind of the fledgling show, the twins become the center of a media circus railing against them as dupes of an "angry feminist" agenda and questioning their right to conduct a public search. While the initial backlash rattles the McClairs and leads them to question Sam's ethics, they're even less prepared for what happens when their prodigal father contacts Thomas.
Using third-person narrative, podcast and voicemail transcripts, e-mails, text message conversations and more, Anthony constructs a portrait of the difficult and delicate process of adolescence, when the search for one's identity becomes entangled with peer relationships and ambitions for the future. Thomas and Savannah may pass the wunderkind test, but at heart they're both children looking for answers about their parents, and Anthony keeps their vulnerability front and center.
The narrative also deconstructs the dual hurricanes of rage and support that seem to instantly whip up around anyone lucky or unlucky enough to become the focal point of popular attention, even a pair of unassuming teenagers and their devoted grandmother. However, the McClairs also strike back at the heart of the firestorm in clever, hilarious ways. Smart yet surprisingly sweet, this meditation on family and media is as captivating as a favorite podcast. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: Teenaged twin siblings broadcast their search for their unknown father in a podcast that invites national attention and criticism in this multi-format novel.