The Porcupine of Truth

In his young adult novel, The Porcupine of Truth (2015), Bill Konigsberg combines a straightforward first-person narrative with the classic structure of a road novel to explore issues of identity, family, and faith.

Seventeen-year-old Carson Smith is at the zoo in Billings, Montana, wondering at the fact that less than a day before, he had been eating a hot dog in Manhattan. Carson has been brought to Billings by his mother, who has dumped him at the zoo despite the fact that the zoo is the last place Carson would have chosen to be. They have traveled to Billings to live with his estranged father, whom Carson hasn’t seen in fourteen years and who is now dying.

Carson meets a beautiful black girl, Aisha, working in the zoo’s gift shop. They share some banter, and Aisha offers Carson a tour, which he accepts. They talk as they tour the mostly-empty zoo, and Carson discovers she does not actually work at the zoo. Aisha confesses to Carson that she sometimes sleeps at the zoo. Carson asks her why, but she does not answer. He asks her for her phone number, thinking that he will ask her out on a date, but is disappointed when she tells him to give her his number instead, that she will call him. He assumes this is a polite blow-off and that she will never actually call him.



His mother drives him to his father’s house, warning him that his father doesn’t look well. Shocked at his father’s physical appearance, Carson is also angry when his father praises his mother’s work as a parent, since his father was nowhere to be seen. Carson’s father is revealed to have been a lifelong alcoholic; he now has only months left to live as his liver fails because of cirrhosis. Carson is aware that this is also how his grandfather, Russ, behaved—a lifelong alcoholic who abandoned his father when he was just a child. This knowledge tempers some of Carson’s anger.

Carson meets Aisha again, and she tells him the truth: her father, who is very religious, has kicked her out of her home because she is a homosexual. He intends to send her to a religious therapy program designed to “cure” homosexuality. She has been sleeping at the zoo ever since. Carson is initially disappointed because he likes Aisha romantically and finds her very physically attractive. Moved by her plight, he invites her to come to live with his family at his father’s house, explaining to her the situation concerning his parents being divorced and his father’s declining health.

Grateful to have a home to live in, Aisha tries to be helpful. She and Carson go into the basement, where a flood has damaged most of his father’s possessions. They begin to clean out some of the boxes, going through his father’s photos and other mementos. As they examine the mementos, however, Carson believes he hasn’t been told the whole truth about his grandfather—and is surprised to discover that Russ may still be alive. Carson decides that he can do something nice for his father, who regrets his relationship with his own father. He and Aisha decide to follow the clues, heading out on a road trip to find Russ.



The morning they leave, they sneak out at 5 a.m. in order to avoid questions, but are caught by Carson’s mother. She is angry and initially seems likely to stop them, but then decides that it might do them some good to clear their heads, She lets them go, thinking they will be back in a day.

They know the route that Russ took when he abandoned his family, and they follow it exactly. This allows them to meet and stay with the same people as Russ had decades before. As they drive through Wyoming, Utah, and California in Russ’s wake, they discuss god and faith with themselves and with various people of different faiths that they meet; they invent their own deity: the Porcupine of Truth, to make the point that all gods are figments.

Their journey takes them to San Francisco, where they seek out a man named Turk mentioned in some of the things they found in the basement boxes. They locate Turk, a very old man who reveals he was Russ’s homosexual lover. Turk tells them the sad news: Russ contracted AIDS in the 1980s and died because of the disease. Carson has a deeply emotional reaction to this news; he and Aisha take Turk with them back to Billings, where he meets Carson’s father. Carson realizes that he is lucky in that he has constructed a family—he has reconnected with his father, found a sister in Aisha, and now has a grandfather of sorts with Turk.