Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries

Two teens, two diaries, two sordid scandals. All from the same dark place- a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy’s identity, and swindled her way to the National Book Awards.

First published in 1971, Go Ask Alice shocked readers and reinvented the young adult genre. Fifty years and 5 million copies later, Go Ask Alice is more than famous-it’s iconic. Even people who haven’t read it know the basics- Some teenager’s diary … she’s hooked on drugs … it might be fake … doesn’t she die at the end?

But Alice was only the beginning.

In 1979, another real diary rattled the nation. The posthumous account of a boy lured into devil-worship, Jay’s Journal spurred the Satanic Panic-a literal witch hunt that lasted for decades, shattering lives and poisoning whole communities.

Unmask Alice- LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the Worlds Most Notorious Diaries is the true story of a young-adult blockbuster … of a terror that stalked 1980s America … and of the ruthless charlatan behind both.

Author and veteran radio/television broadcaster Rick Emerson spent five years unearthing and assembling this amazing and , nearly unbelievable story- interviewing central and peripheral players, visiting key locations, and sifting through tens of thousands of documents.

The story stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah desert called the fraud capital of America . It’s the story of a doomed romance and an unhinged celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire. Unmask Alice is the gripping true story of a pop-culture smash-and its ugly, ongoing fallout.