Liz Moore’s newest novel, The God of the Woods, takes place at a picturesque summer camp in the Adirondack region of upstate New York.
One morning in 1975, it’s discovered that 13-year-old camper Barbara Van Laar isn’t in her bunk. That launches an investigation that echoes a search for Barbara’s older brother, who went missing from the same area several years before and was never found.
Moore weaves so much into this 500-page novel, including class struggles and family secrets, but it never feels confusing or overplotted. She shifts seamlessly among several different timelines, unfolding the plot piece by piece to reveal the lives of her characters, which only adds to the drama of the search for the missing girl.
Barbara is the daughter of the prominent Van Laar family, which owns Camp Emerson and lives near the grounds on an estate called Self-Reliance. As part of the investigation into her disappearance, we meet her bunkmate, Tracy; her mother, Alice; the camp director, T.J.; and a young female detective, Judy. All are complex, well-developed characters who read like real people, and Moore’s skillful writing keeps the plot moving at a breakneck pace. There are also some campfire-style ghost stories, a serial killer on the loose, and a few characters you love to hate.
I read a lot, but I seldom crave a story so badly that I stop everything to finish a book. That’s what I did with The God of the Woods. I couldn’t stop reading it or thinking about it, and now I can’t stop talking about it either. The story, the characters, the setting, the ending — everything about this novel is absolute perfection.
