Susan Thistlethwaite

When Demons Float Susan Thistlethwaite

Kristin Ginelli, Chicago-cop-turned-religion-professor, is horrified when her new Muslim faculty colleague is targeted with a hate crime by self-styled white supremacists. She investigates, wading into the disgusting waters of white supremacist hate online. She is stunned to learn how young people and adults are being tempted into hate and violence on the Internet. As she teaches her religion classes, she comes to realize this is what philosophers and theologians have meant by the demonic. In this kind of extremism, hate rises to the surface and it is hard to keep it down. When a student is killed, and Kristin is threatened, she has to cut through the university's stalling and what looks increasingly like corruption in the Chicago police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to find the killers and try to stem the tide of hate.