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The Quiet Damage

QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

Author Jesselyn Cook
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Hardcover
$30.00 US
Crown
On sale Jul 23, 2024 | 272 Pages | 9780593443255
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The “gripping” (The Atlantic) story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations.

“Excellent . . . This is the intimate side of the cold civil war America has been stuck in for nearly a decade.”—Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“SHED MY DNA”: three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they’ve exploded in popularity. What’s often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level—the family. 

In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control. Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty—one to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fiancé, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.

Charting the arc of each believer’s path from their first intersection with conspiracy theories to the depths of their cultish conviction, to—in some cases—their rejection of disinformation and the mending of fractured relationships, Cook offers a rare, intimate look into the psychology of how and why ordinary people come to believe the unbelievable. Profound, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, The Quiet Damage lays bare how we have been taken hostage by grifters peddling lies built on false hope—and how we might release our loved ones, and ourselves, from their grasp.
1

THE PLAN TO SAVE THE WORLD

—Matt—

Matt gazed out the window at the trees and tried to calm his racing mind. It was autumn of 2019 in eastern Missouri, and the leaves had started to fall from their branches, blanketing the grass in crimson and amber. In the distance, people walked down the street in the late afternoon sun, going about their business as they pleased. Matt envied them.

He glanced back inside at the clock on the wall and sighed, his foot tapping anxiously against the leg of his chair. Half an hour left to go.

“Matt?”

His wife’s voice pierced his daze. Seated a few feet over, across from their marriage counselor, she was staring right at him with dark mascara tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Matt,” echoed Dr. Fellows, looking up from the notepad he’d been scribbling away in behind his desk. “Andrea just told you she feels like a single mother.”

His words hung in the air between them as Matt tried to refocus. From the moment they’d sat down, Andrea had been divulging through sobs how he had devolved from a loving, supportive partner into a distracted, inattentive roommate who rarely emerged from the basement. Now Dr. Fellows was studying him like an animal in a lab, trying to figure out what was going on with him. Matt looked at Andrea. Even if he told them, he knew they wouldn’t believe it.

A thirty-eight-year-old God-fearing Republican, Matt had a pointy brown beard and chin-length hair tucked under a baseball cap to complete his daily jeans-and-tee ensemble. He was a pensive, soft-spoken man of relatively few words, especially in counseling. But his eyes, a few shades of blue lighter than his wife’s, told a story of their own. They were crinkled with laugh lines from years of silly moments goofing around with Andrea and their two young kids and framed with dark circles from months of late-night doomscrolling marathons. He didn’t laugh much anymore.

“Is there anything you want to say?” Dr. Fellows nudged.

Matt leaned back in his chair with his hands on his knees and exhaled deeply through his nose. There were lots of things he wanted to say. Things so earth-shattering, so unbelievably surreal and crazy, that they would think he was, well, crazy.

“I’m sorry, Andrea,” he offered instead. “You’re right.”

Matt loved his wife. He and Andrea were college sweethearts; they had met through a student ministry group back when he was a shy, dorky senior who looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and she was a bubbly brunette in her freshman year far out of his league. It was she who had pursued him, though, striking up flirty, late-night conversations on AOL Instant Messenger. They had a lot in common. Both had been raised with Christian conservative values in rural Missouri households where saying grace before meals was mandatory and the radio was set to Rush Limbaugh.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect, Matt knew that. It didn’t help that they’d spent most of it trapped in an unwinnable Tetris game of debt. No matter how many times they tried to reconfigure their life to make payments, the debts just kept stacking back up. Between Matt’s job at a small Christian radio station and Andrea’s as a middle-school librarian, their combined annual income was a little over $50,000. That didn’t leave much for weekend getaways, dinners at Olive Garden, or the other relative luxuries they’d imagined while building a family together. Maxed-out credit cards and past-due bills piled on the kitchen counter had never been part of that vision. To Matt, it felt like even though they’d lived by the book—going to college, finding jobs, getting married, having kids, following Christ—the promise of financial security remained ever out of reach.

But money troubles weren’t the reason Andrea had insisted on counseling. Matt knew that too. Everything she’d told Dr. Fellows over the preceding thirty minutes was true: He had been mentally and emotionally checked out of their family life for the past year. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, though. . . . He was just preoccupied with far more important things than date nights and bedtime routines—things he desperately wanted to get back to, instead of sitting here being judged by a man with a notepad. Andrea would understand soon enough. One day—any day now—everything would be revealed. Her anger toward him would melt into gratitude and she would feel foolish for having wasted his time with the relative trivialities they discussed in counseling once she knew what he’d been up to.

He was on a mission to save the f***ing world.
Copyright © 2024 by Jesselyn Cook. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Where the book shines is in creating empathy for a group of people frequently dismissed or misunderstood, and for their grieving and divided families . . . By delving into the ways people become susceptible to QAnon, Cook uncovers a deeper truth: Many of us go through life with a gaping hole caused by trauma, isolation or shame, and we find healthy and unhealthy ways to fill it. For people like Doris and Kendra, QAnon’s message, however insane it sounds (and is), makes them feel valued and valuable.”—The New York Times

“Each is tragic and heartbreaking in its own way. All feel highly pertinent to the political realities of the moment, where great masses of people share beliefs that are demonstrably untrue.”—The Bulwark

“Cook illuminates vividly the experience of loving someone in crisis—a crisis you can’t fully understand and definitely didn’t anticipate—and the impossible question of how long to stand by them. . . . The stories are gripping not just because QAnon is so bewilderingly strange but also because the idea of a person you love disappearing before your eyes is so terrible—and perhaps for many readers, relatable. . . . [T]he book feels briefly hopeful. With patience and empathy, it seems to suggest, you can reach someone who once felt very, very far away.”—The Atlantic

“If you are wondering why so many people seem to be slipping into alternative and frightening realities, you have to read this brilliant book. It’s compassionate, wise, thoroughly reported—and terrifying. One of the defining books of our time.”—Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Stolen Focus

“Captivating from the very first page, The Quiet Damage floored me. With empathetic storytelling and an exquisite eye for detail, Jesselyn Cook ushers readers into the darkest corners of the internet to document how disinformation is dismantling family bonds and disintegrating the social fabric. Gracefully written and thoroughly researched, this book is essential for this era.”—Toluse Olorunnipa, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice and White House Bureau Chief at The Washington Post

“This book is brilliant, heartbreaking, and necessary reading. Through tender stories of families riven by social media, politics, and trauma . . . Cook offers an essential account of the context and human cost of conspiracy theory.”—Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, poet, and contributing writer for The New Yorker
© Kyle M. Gager
Jesselyn Cook is an award-winning investigative reporter and journalism lecturer who has written extensively about online conspiracy theories and their offline harms. Prior to covering the tech beat at NBC News, she was a senior reporter on HuffPost's national enterprise desk. She holds a master's degree in journalism and international relations from New York University and was selected as a 2025 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. View titles by Jesselyn Cook

About

The “gripping” (The Atlantic) story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations.

“Excellent . . . This is the intimate side of the cold civil war America has been stuck in for nearly a decade.”—Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“SHED MY DNA”: three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they’ve exploded in popularity. What’s often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level—the family. 

In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control. Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty—one to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fiancé, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.

Charting the arc of each believer’s path from their first intersection with conspiracy theories to the depths of their cultish conviction, to—in some cases—their rejection of disinformation and the mending of fractured relationships, Cook offers a rare, intimate look into the psychology of how and why ordinary people come to believe the unbelievable. Profound, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, The Quiet Damage lays bare how we have been taken hostage by grifters peddling lies built on false hope—and how we might release our loved ones, and ourselves, from their grasp.

Excerpt

1

THE PLAN TO SAVE THE WORLD

—Matt—

Matt gazed out the window at the trees and tried to calm his racing mind. It was autumn of 2019 in eastern Missouri, and the leaves had started to fall from their branches, blanketing the grass in crimson and amber. In the distance, people walked down the street in the late afternoon sun, going about their business as they pleased. Matt envied them.

He glanced back inside at the clock on the wall and sighed, his foot tapping anxiously against the leg of his chair. Half an hour left to go.

“Matt?”

His wife’s voice pierced his daze. Seated a few feet over, across from their marriage counselor, she was staring right at him with dark mascara tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Matt,” echoed Dr. Fellows, looking up from the notepad he’d been scribbling away in behind his desk. “Andrea just told you she feels like a single mother.”

His words hung in the air between them as Matt tried to refocus. From the moment they’d sat down, Andrea had been divulging through sobs how he had devolved from a loving, supportive partner into a distracted, inattentive roommate who rarely emerged from the basement. Now Dr. Fellows was studying him like an animal in a lab, trying to figure out what was going on with him. Matt looked at Andrea. Even if he told them, he knew they wouldn’t believe it.

A thirty-eight-year-old God-fearing Republican, Matt had a pointy brown beard and chin-length hair tucked under a baseball cap to complete his daily jeans-and-tee ensemble. He was a pensive, soft-spoken man of relatively few words, especially in counseling. But his eyes, a few shades of blue lighter than his wife’s, told a story of their own. They were crinkled with laugh lines from years of silly moments goofing around with Andrea and their two young kids and framed with dark circles from months of late-night doomscrolling marathons. He didn’t laugh much anymore.

“Is there anything you want to say?” Dr. Fellows nudged.

Matt leaned back in his chair with his hands on his knees and exhaled deeply through his nose. There were lots of things he wanted to say. Things so earth-shattering, so unbelievably surreal and crazy, that they would think he was, well, crazy.

“I’m sorry, Andrea,” he offered instead. “You’re right.”

Matt loved his wife. He and Andrea were college sweethearts; they had met through a student ministry group back when he was a shy, dorky senior who looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and she was a bubbly brunette in her freshman year far out of his league. It was she who had pursued him, though, striking up flirty, late-night conversations on AOL Instant Messenger. They had a lot in common. Both had been raised with Christian conservative values in rural Missouri households where saying grace before meals was mandatory and the radio was set to Rush Limbaugh.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect, Matt knew that. It didn’t help that they’d spent most of it trapped in an unwinnable Tetris game of debt. No matter how many times they tried to reconfigure their life to make payments, the debts just kept stacking back up. Between Matt’s job at a small Christian radio station and Andrea’s as a middle-school librarian, their combined annual income was a little over $50,000. That didn’t leave much for weekend getaways, dinners at Olive Garden, or the other relative luxuries they’d imagined while building a family together. Maxed-out credit cards and past-due bills piled on the kitchen counter had never been part of that vision. To Matt, it felt like even though they’d lived by the book—going to college, finding jobs, getting married, having kids, following Christ—the promise of financial security remained ever out of reach.

But money troubles weren’t the reason Andrea had insisted on counseling. Matt knew that too. Everything she’d told Dr. Fellows over the preceding thirty minutes was true: He had been mentally and emotionally checked out of their family life for the past year. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, though. . . . He was just preoccupied with far more important things than date nights and bedtime routines—things he desperately wanted to get back to, instead of sitting here being judged by a man with a notepad. Andrea would understand soon enough. One day—any day now—everything would be revealed. Her anger toward him would melt into gratitude and she would feel foolish for having wasted his time with the relative trivialities they discussed in counseling once she knew what he’d been up to.

He was on a mission to save the f***ing world.
Copyright © 2024 by Jesselyn Cook. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

“Where the book shines is in creating empathy for a group of people frequently dismissed or misunderstood, and for their grieving and divided families . . . By delving into the ways people become susceptible to QAnon, Cook uncovers a deeper truth: Many of us go through life with a gaping hole caused by trauma, isolation or shame, and we find healthy and unhealthy ways to fill it. For people like Doris and Kendra, QAnon’s message, however insane it sounds (and is), makes them feel valued and valuable.”—The New York Times

“Each is tragic and heartbreaking in its own way. All feel highly pertinent to the political realities of the moment, where great masses of people share beliefs that are demonstrably untrue.”—The Bulwark

“Cook illuminates vividly the experience of loving someone in crisis—a crisis you can’t fully understand and definitely didn’t anticipate—and the impossible question of how long to stand by them. . . . The stories are gripping not just because QAnon is so bewilderingly strange but also because the idea of a person you love disappearing before your eyes is so terrible—and perhaps for many readers, relatable. . . . [T]he book feels briefly hopeful. With patience and empathy, it seems to suggest, you can reach someone who once felt very, very far away.”—The Atlantic

“If you are wondering why so many people seem to be slipping into alternative and frightening realities, you have to read this brilliant book. It’s compassionate, wise, thoroughly reported—and terrifying. One of the defining books of our time.”—Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Stolen Focus

“Captivating from the very first page, The Quiet Damage floored me. With empathetic storytelling and an exquisite eye for detail, Jesselyn Cook ushers readers into the darkest corners of the internet to document how disinformation is dismantling family bonds and disintegrating the social fabric. Gracefully written and thoroughly researched, this book is essential for this era.”—Toluse Olorunnipa, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice and White House Bureau Chief at The Washington Post

“This book is brilliant, heartbreaking, and necessary reading. Through tender stories of families riven by social media, politics, and trauma . . . Cook offers an essential account of the context and human cost of conspiracy theory.”—Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, poet, and contributing writer for The New Yorker

Author

© Kyle M. Gager
Jesselyn Cook is an award-winning investigative reporter and journalism lecturer who has written extensively about online conspiracy theories and their offline harms. Prior to covering the tech beat at NBC News, she was a senior reporter on HuffPost's national enterprise desk. She holds a master's degree in journalism and international relations from New York University and was selected as a 2025 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. View titles by Jesselyn Cook

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