It’s the summer of 2003 in the small Canadian town of Vernon, and two teen boys emerge from the wilderness.They claimed to have been raised in the British Columbia wilderness and grown up without exposure to society—no TV, no school, no registered IDs. Journalist Sam Mullins grew up in Vernon and can remember the impact the boys made, and how the Vernon community embraced them with open arms, housing them, feeding them, and checking in on them.
But things weren’t adding up—one of the boys was extremely thin and would only eat fruit, and they both had huge gaps in their conflicting stories. Despite all the red flags, everyone was surprised to learn that nothing the wild boys said was true. Sam tells the story of the con that stunned Vernonites, who the wild boys really were, and why two young kids would go to such great lengths to run away to establish an incredible identity in another country.
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