By Gretchen Anthony
On Sale: July 28, 2020
Park Row Books
CONTEMPORARY FICTION/Mothers
&Children/Family/FictionSatire/Humorous American Literarure
978-0778308744; 077830874X
$17.99 USD
416 pages
A whip-smart, entertaining novel about twin siblings who
become a national phenomenon after launching a podcast to find the biological
father they never knew.
The death of Thomas and Savannah McClair’s mother turns their world upside down. Raised to be fiercely curious by their grandmother Maggie, the twins become determined to learn the identity of their biological father. And when their mission goes viral, an eccentric producer offers them a dream platform: a fully sponsored podcast called The Kids Are Gonna Ask. To discover the truth, Thomas and Savannah begin interviewing people from their mother’s past and are shocked when the podcast ignites in popularity. As the attention mounts, they get caught in a national debate they never asked for—but nothing compares to the mayhem that ensues when they find him.
Cleverly constructed, emotionally perceptive and sharply funny, The Kids Are Gonna Ask is a rollicking coming-of-age story and a moving exploration of all the ways we can go from lost to found.
The death of Thomas and Savannah McClair’s mother turns their world upside down. Raised to be fiercely curious by their grandmother Maggie, the twins become determined to learn the identity of their biological father. And when their mission goes viral, an eccentric producer offers them a dream platform: a fully sponsored podcast called The Kids Are Gonna Ask. To discover the truth, Thomas and Savannah begin interviewing people from their mother’s past and are shocked when the podcast ignites in popularity. As the attention mounts, they get caught in a national debate they never asked for—but nothing compares to the mayhem that ensues when they find him.
Cleverly constructed, emotionally perceptive and sharply funny, The Kids Are Gonna Ask is a rollicking coming-of-age story and a moving exploration of all the ways we can go from lost to found.
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JULY
The house had become an aquarium—one side tank, the other,
fingerprint-smeared glass—with Thomas McClair on the inside looking out. There
had been a dozen protests outside their home in less than a week, all for the
McClairs to—what, enjoy? Critique? Reject? There was no making sense of
it.
Tonight, Thomas pulled his desk chair up to the window and
kicked his feet onto the sill. He’d been too anxious to eat dinner, but his
mind apparently hadn’t notified his stomach, which now growled and cramped. He
was seventeen. He could swallow a whole pizza and wash it down with a
half-gallon of milk, then go back for more, especially being an athlete. But
that was before.
Before the podcast, before the secrets, before the wave of
national attention. Now he was just a screwup with a group of strangers
swarming the parkway across the street from his house because he’d practically
invited them to come.
He deserved to feel awful.
The McClairs had been locked in the house for a week,
leaving Thomas short of both entertainment and sanity. He had no choice but to
watch the show unfolding outside. Stuck in his beige bedroom, with the Foo
Fighters at Wembley poster and the Pinewood Derby blue ribbons, overlooking the
front lawn and the driveway and the hand-me-down Volvo neither he nor Savannah
had driven since last week. There they stood—a crowd of milling strangers, all
vying for the McClairs’ attention. All these people with their causes. Some who
came to help or ogle. More who came to hate.
Thomas brought his face almost to the glass and tried to
figure out the newly assembling crowd. Earlier that day, out of all the
attention seekers, one guy in particular had stood out. He wore black jeans,
black boots, a black beanie—a massive amount of clothing for the kind of day
where you could see the summer heat curling up from the pavement—and a black
T-shirt that screamed WHO’S PAYING YOU? in pink neon. He also held a leash
attached to a life-size German shepherd plushy toy.
Some of the demonstrators had gone home for the night, only
to be replaced by a candlelight vigil. And a capella singing. There were only
about a dozen people in the group, all women, except for two tall guys in the
back lending their baritones to a standard rotation of hymns. “Amazing Grace”
first, followed by “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” Now they were into a song
Thomas didn’t know, but the longer he listened, he figured hundred-to-one odds
that the lyrics consisted of no more than three words, repeated over and over.
They hit the last note and raised their candles high above their heads. By
daaaaaaaaaaaayyyy.
“No more,” he begged into the glass. “I can’t take any
more.”
A week. Of this.
Of protests, rallies and news crews with their vans and
satellites and microphones.
Of his sister, Savannah, locked in her room, refusing to
speak to him.
Of his grandmother Maggie in hers, sick with worry.
Of finding—then losing—his biodad, the missing piece of his
mother’s story. And his own.
Thomas was left to deal with it all. Because he’d started
it. And because he was a finisher. And most of all, because it wasn’t over yet.
Excerpted from The Kids Are Gonna Ask by Gretchen Anthony © 2020 by Gretchen Anthony, used with permission by Park Row Books.
About the author:
GRETCHEN ANTHONY is the author of Evergreen Tidings
from the Baumgartners, which was a Midwestern Connections Pick and a best books
pick by Amazon, BookBub, PopSugar, and the New York Post. Her work has been
featured in The Washington Post, Medium, and The Write Life, among others. She
lives in Minneapolis with her family.
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