The God of the Woods

Liz Moore's latest novel, set in a woodsy, upstate New York summer camp in 1975, kicks off with a terrifying, early-morning revelation: one of the campers has gone missing. And not just any camper—it's Barbara Van Laar, the 13-year-old daughter of the camp's wealthy owners, who vanished overnight. Her disappearance is a shock that hits her family especially hard, because Barbara's brother, Bear, also went missing as a child over a decade before, and was never found. Moore takes readers through a quiet, meandering mystery that introduces the many characters who populate the Van Laars' shattered world, from the stoic camp director and the young workers who keep things running on the property to a misbehaving family friend and a young investigator determined to prove herself to her male colleagues. As Moore unravels the dual mysteries of what happened to Barbara and her brother, she interrogates the roles that wealth, privilege, and parenting play in shaping the arc of a life.

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