Scout Camp: Sex, Death, and Secret Societies Inside the Boy Scouts of America

Investigative journalist Renner (Little, Crazy Children) examines the death of a Boy Scout leader in this disturbing account. In 1995, Mike Klingler, the director of Ohio’s Seven Ranges Boy Scout Reservation, died of a gunshot wound under mysterious circumstances. After Klingler was accused of raping the camp’s nature and crafts director, he was dismissed before the summer session ended. Soon after, he was found in a field near his home with a bullet in his chest. In 2022, Renner—a former summer counselor at Seven Ranges—reconnected with a fellow Scout, with whom he shared his suspicions that Klingler might have been murdered. Their conversation prompted Renner to reexamine his experiences at Seven Ranges and dig into Klingler’s death. Renner buttresses his search for the truth with a searing look at the history of sexual assault in the Boy Scouts, which he notes has prompted nearly eight times as many abuse claims as those against the Catholic Church. His research turns up no easy answers, but his blend of dogged reporting and first-person recollection of the uncomfortably sexualized rituals he experienced as a young scout lends the proceedings a fierce immediacy. It’s a chilling study of unchecked power. Photos. Agent: Joëlle Delbourgo, Joëlle Delbourgo Assoc. (Mar.)