Do You Know The Monkey Man? Books

FOR THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD SAMANTHA, life consists of too many unanswered questions. Why has her father not tried to contact her all these years? How could he have allowed her twin sister to drown in Clearwater Quarry when they were only toddlers? And how can Samantha's mother expect her to accept some man she hardly knows as her new father? Samantha already has a father out there. Somewhere. A fateful decision sets into motion a chain of events and confrontations that will change Samantha's and her family's lives forever. As she sets out to find her father and discover what really happened the day her sister was presumed drowned, she uncovers painful secrets that threaten to destroy her family all over again. Readers will be drawn into Dori Butler's dramatic, suspenseful, and sensitive story of one family's crisis unwittingly brought on by an adolescent girl's search for the truth.

What happens when everything you thought was true about your life turns out to be a lie? Thirteen-year-old T. J. always believed that her twin sister and her mother were dead―because that’s what her father had told her. But Mom and Sam are very much alive. And now they want T. J. to be part of their family. When T. J. reluctantly visits her mom and Sam for the first time, she is stunned by how similar she is to her twin sister, even though their lives have been very different. But while she is drawn to her new family, she is also wary of becoming attached to them and hurting her father’s feelings. Then when her father suffers a debilitating accident and tries to ensnare T. J. in another web of lies, her loyalties are finally tested. In this thought-provoking companion to Do You Know the Monkey Man?, Dori Hillestad Butler creates a complex portrait of a family in crisis. Her skillful portrayal of T. J., a conflicted adolescent struggling with her identity, will resonate with readers.