Slender Man case inspires Milwaukee native's novel of obsession, 'Monsters We Have Made'

The Slender Man case of 2014, when two Waukesha pre-teens stabbed a friend 19 times and left her nearly dead, has inspired multiple retellings, including a memorable "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" episode and Kathleen Hale's non-fiction examination "Slenderman" (2022).

In her new "Monsters We Have Made" (Vintage), Milwaukee native Lindsay Starck comes at this story of violence and obsession with an imaginary character from a different angle. Her literary novel with an undercurrent of horror fiction looks deeply at the parents of one of the perpetrators, especially the mother. What does it mean to have birthed and raised such a daughter? How responsible is she, the mother? What relationship can she and her daughter have now?

Starck will talk about her new book at 6:30 p.m. April 19 at Milwaukee's Boswell Books.

This is Starck's second novel, following "Noah's Wife" (2016). As her bio notes, she "was raised in the Milwaukee Public Library": her mother, Lorelei Starck, was the library's communications director. Lindsay Starck now lives in Minneapolis, where she is associate professor of English at Augsburg University.

"Monsters We Have Made" is not a roman a clef or one-on-one transposition of events from real life. In Starck's novel the two girls are younger and attacked a babysitter, not a friend. Faye and Anna were in thrall to the Kingman, a faceless monster of the woods in a black cloak and light-colored crown. The pedigree that one of Starck's characters creates for the monster allows readers to see him as something legendary and much older than the spawn of an online forum.

A decade after the stabbings, subsequent court proceedings and humiliating notoriety, Faye's mother Sylvia is a wreck, her marriage over, her now-adult daughter elsewhere and incommunicado. But the arrival of police at her door with Faye's seemingly abandoned daughter Amelia, only 3, triggers painful recollections and alarming fear about the fate of Faye. Sylvia reconnects with the other principals — her ex-husband Jack and Faye's collaborator Anna, now living under a different name. In their search for the missing young woman, they're pulled into the orbit of a professor obsessed with tracing threads of the Kingman through history.

Sylvia scourges herself with an intensity that would make hairshirted flagellants seem soft. A question her sister's partner asks inflames her: "After everything that's happened — are you happy that you had your daughter?" Anyone who's suffered even modest parental guilt over a child's actions might be able to appreciate the emotional knot Sylvia is in.

Starck's novel builds to an active climax on the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior.

Beyond the initial crime and later disappearance, "Monsters We Have Made" is also a meditation on the viral power of conspiracy theories: if you hear a story often enough, no matter what its factual reality, the odds go up that you are going to believe it.

If you go

Lindsay Starck will speak about "Monsters We Have Made" at 6:30 p.m. April 19 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave. To register for this free event, visit lindsaystarckmke.eventbrite.com.

More: 21 recommended books by Wisconsin writers from the 21st century

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Slender Man case inspires novel of obsession, 'Monsters We Have Made'