In small-town America, a young adult novel about teen pregnancy is banned by the local school board, igniting a fierce and violent debate over abortion, religious beliefs, and modern feminism. Its directionless New York City author arrives in town to defend the book and finds that it has inspired a group of local teens to rebel in strange and unexpected ways. A timely and unforgettable drama about the failure of urban and heartland America to understand each other, The Metal Children explores what happens when fiction becomes a matter of life and death.
Praise for Adam Rapp: “[Rapp] shows an exuberant love for the written word . . . [He] tells stories that encase classical themes—class and envy, ambition and alienation—in blunt terms and in modern settings.” —Jesse McKinley, The New York Times“Rapp . . . is a gifted storyteller. He makes demands on his audience, and he rewards its close attention with depth and elegance.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker
Adam Rapp is the author of numerous plays, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Red Light Winter, and the novel The Year of Endless Sorrows. In 2005, his young adult novel The Buffalo Tree was censored by a school board in Reading, Pennsylvania.