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Young Adult Fiction Music

Age of Unreason

The X Gang

by (author) Warren Kinsella

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2019
Category
Music, Coming of Age, Drugs, Alcohol, Substance Abuse
Recommended Age
15 to 18
Recommended Grade
10 to 12
Recommended Reading age
15 to 18
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459742208
    Publish Date
    Dec 2019
    List Price
    $9.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781459742185
    Publish Date
    Dec 2019
    List Price
    $14.99

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Where to buy it

Description

The X Gang must stand up for their beliefs in a changing world.

A new face of violence and hate has come to Portland, Maine, and the punks in the X Gang find themselves targeted once again. It is the early eighties, and the youth subculture they have grown up in is changing. Kurt, X, and the others have reluctantly concluded that they are unlikely to ever change the world with their punk anthems, but that injustice is still worth fighting against. The friends lean on each other for the strength to deal with death, addiction, sexism, and racism they see all around them.

Meanwhile, the police and the FBI are on the trail of a killer, and a member of the X Gang holds the secret to the fugitive’s sinister motivations. Age of Unreason tells the shocking story of how hatred can become a cause, and how we must stand together against it no matter the cost.

About the author

Awards

  • Commended, CCBC's Best Books for Kids and Teens (Spring 2020)

Contributor Notes

Warren Kinsella is an author, musician, lawyer, and political consultant. His previous books include Recipe for Hate and New Dark Ages from the X Gang series, and the national bestseller Web of Hate. Warren also plays bass in the punk band SFH and runs the popular blog The War Room. He lives in Toronto.

Excerpt: Age of Unreason: The X Gang (by (author) Warren Kinsella)

Chapter 1

The words contained in the police report were leaked everywhere. They were on the front page of every newspaper.

The yellow Ford truck had quietly pulled up to the curb around 8:20 a.m. on Monday, April 13, 1981. It slid into a spot just a little bit past the entrance to 70 Forest Avenue in Portland, Maine. Back in the 1920s, someone had carved the words “YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION” into the grey foundation stones. But the old building was now home to the YWCA — the men had moved to a much more modern space down the road.

The old building was a bit of a dump, and it creaked and wheezed like an old man. Its best feature was the main doors, positioned as they were beneath a spectacular archway, which architects called a lunette. This area was decorated with lovely leaded glass, which shimmered when the sun caught it.

Most weekdays it was pretty challenging to find a parking spot so close to the main doors. But not that day. The driver of the yellow truck had no difficulty finding a space. He’d been watching the place for weeks, the police figured, and he knew how busy it could be early in the morning.

The staff greeted one another as they arrived for work. It was an unusually warm spring day, and some of them were smiling and chattering about their weekends. Some paused to hold the door open for harried-looking parents dropping off their kids at the Y’s daycare.

The truck, it was later discovered, was the legal property of Roger Rentals of Boston, Massachusetts, but it had been assigned to a rental company — Macmillan’s Body Shop — way up in Newport, Vermont, near the Canadian border. A pair of bewildered employees at Macmillan’s would tell a small army of FBI agents that the truck had been driven off the lot a few days before the bombing, rented by a clean-cut young man who identified himself as Thomas M. Jones from Pulaski, Tennessee. Mr. Jones had told them he was helping a friend move. Thomas M. Jones was, in fact, the name of a long-dead lawyer, in whose offices the Ku Klux Klan was formed in Pulaski back in 1865. Jones had started the Klan along with some fellow former Confederate soldiers, mainly as a lark.

This modern-day Thomas M. Jones was a slender young man with a crew cut. When he smiled — which he apparently didn’t do a lot when he was at Macmillan’s — he had a broad, toothy grin that made him look like a teenager.

The five-story YWCA building had an ancient gym located on the main floor along with the daycare center. The administration and membership offices were housed on the second. On the upper floors were offices supporting an array of programs from summer camps to healthy living to veterans outreach. There were also a couple of converted classrooms, where the YWCA and YMCA did a booming business offering ESL classes for a modest fee. The women’s health and well-being offices were up there, too. They offered women and girls advice on reproductive health.

The investigators discovered that for the four days prior to the bombing, Thomas M. Jones had been renting a room at the Holiday Inn across the road from the Maine Mall in South Portland. He’d parked the yellow rental truck in the lot out back, in a spot that could be readily seen from his room. On the inn’s register, he had used the long-dead Klansman’s name, but it turned out he had entered a real mailing address in the registry: a P.O. box in Mobile, Alabama. The FBI would quickly determine, however, that the P.O. box was registered to the United Klans of America. The man had paid cash for his room and didn’t leave behind a single fingerprint or anything else that gave any hint to his true identity.

That Monday morning, the man everyone would soon know as Thomas M. Jones drove the yellow rental truck downtown and parked it on Forest Avenue. He then hopped out of the truck, locked the door, and walked west.

Editorial Reviews

Like the first two books of the series, Age of Unreason is a storehouse of information about punk rock and the culture clashes of the late 80s. Kinsella knows the scene and understands the kids who lived it and loved it.

CM Magazine

Kinsella skilfully blends convincing depictions of both the punk scene and the racist underground with the hoary trope of a band of kids setting out to solve a mystery … a suspenseful page-turner that also gives considerable food for thought.

Quill and Quire, for Recipe for Hate

Tension starts high and stays there in this unflinching page-turner, which offers a fascinating glimpse into the early punk scene and a moving testament to the power of friendship.

Publishers Weekly, for Recipe for Hate

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