White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland

Pulitzer finalist Lehr (Dead Reckoning) delivers a dramatic chronicle of a domestic terrorist plot thwarted by the FBI. At the heart of the story is Dan Day, an out-of-work probation officer in Garden City, Kans., who in 2015 became an informant for the FBI on right-wing militia groups in southwestern Kansas. In retaliation for the ISIS-inspired attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., members of one of those groups, the local division of the Kansas Security Force, plotted to bomb an apartment building and mosque in Garden City where Somali Muslims lived and worshipped. Day recorded his conversations with the plotters and introduced them to an undercover FBI agent posing as a black-market arms dealer; thanks to Day’s testimony, three KSF members were eventually convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. Lehr skillfully draws from Day’s recordings to highlight the risks he took (at one point, he got sick and passed out at a militia meeting with a recording device in his pocket), and weaves in illuminating details about the cultural dynamics of the Midwest and moving profiles of Somali refugees who could have been killed in the attack. The result is a chilling and finely wrought portrait of the threat of political extremism. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts. (Nov.)