Book Report: The God of the Woods

12. Liz Moore, The God of the Woods (2024) (7/23/24)

I read Liz Moore's last book, Long Bright River, a couple of years ago and was impressed, so when I saw that she had a new book out, I jumped on it. And I enjoyed it also, perhaps equally. Both books involve a mystery, but they are much more than that. This book is about family, and community, and wealth, and decency, and doing your best. 

The story takes place at a summer camp in the Adirondacks in 1975—a summer camp owned by a family, the Van Laars, whose fancy house sits on a hill just above. It begins when a teenage camper, Barbara, goes missing. Barbara happens to be a Van Laar herself, and she insisted on going to camp—to which her parents readily agreed, as they made plans for a big party to which all their banker/lawyer friends would be invited. Plus, she was rebellious, difficult. They were happy to have her out of their hair. 

A search ensues. The action shifts back and forth between the camp and the family home as the authorities enter in. Then it starts to shift back and forth in time as well, as the disappearance years ago of another child, Barbara's brother Bear, is recalled, and the case is reopened. Meanwhile, a convicted killer from the area has escaped, and is suspected to be heading back to his old stomping grounds. Could he be involved somehow?

Told now from various points of view at various points in time, the story gets filled in incrementally. We come to know all sorts of characters: the current camp counselor, TJ, and her father, Vic, now suffering from dementia but who at one time was virtually part of the Van Laar household; the "nation's first" female state trooper, and now a newly inducted investigator, Judyta; Barbara's bunkmate, Tracy; a groundskeeper back in 1961 when Bear went missing, who was blamed for his disappearance. We also come to know the Van Laar household itself. Something isn't right up there. Is it just their patriarchal privilege that rubs wrong, or is it something more?

We do eventually learn what happened to both Bear and Barbara. I was vaguely surprised by the specifics, if not the general outline, of Bear's fate, mainly because the big clues come late in the story, crowded up against the revelation. What happened to Barbara didn't surprise me, but it was carried out nicely, and I found it satisfying. 

This is a quiet book, really. Of the still-waters-run-deep variety. But the characters are well drawn and you get a real sense of society—or societies: the upper crust and plain-living honest folk. And teenagers, too, still figuring it all out.