num_pages: 349
description: 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 crisisadolescent suicideto 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.
language: English
title: Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
publisher: BenBella Books