LitLounge: Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson (Online)

LitLounge is meeting on Zoom in partnership with Skokie Public Library. Register here; contact Nate Miller (nmiller@mgpl.org) for details.

The book can be checked out through all library ebook platforms, including Hoopla where copies are always available. Find instructions on our Download & Stream page, or contact us for assistance.

Book Synopsis:  Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge--aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner--is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother's house and who is as awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. When the posters begin appearing everywhere, people wonder who is behind them and start to panic. Satanists? Kidnappers? The rumors won't stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge gets a call that threatens to upend her carefully built life: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she's so carefully built? -- Provided by publisher.