Marianne’s Pick of the Week: God of the Woods by Liz Moore

“When lost, yelled the crowd, in chorus, sit down and yell.”

When I get lost (in a book) I never want to yell. I demand quiet. I want to focus all my energy on the book. But with Liz Moore’s God of the Woods chaos could have erupted around me and I would not have lifted my eyes from the page. I was completely engrossed in this mystery.

Meet the Van Laar family – a member of Albany, New York’s elite, old families. The men in the family (all named Peter) are imperious and cold. They marry strictly for the sake of creating heirs and their wives are merely decorative. The family establishes a camp on their summer property for the children of the town. As the years pass the camp becomes less for the town’s young and more of a place for the super elite of Albany to send their children.

In the summer of 1975, the Van Laar’s beloved child Bear goes for a hike in the woods and does not return.  A chaotic search is conducted, to no avail. Bear is lost forever. Is he still alive living in the woods; was he kidnapped or was he killed? Neither the reader nor the Van Laar family knows. The uncertainty leads mother, Alice, to succumb to drink and depression.

Now 14 years later, Van Laar daughter Barbara goes missing from camp. Is the same person behind the disappearance of both children or is it a family member or a camp employee? It’s all the family can do to preserve their reputations and sanities.

This book travels in both time (alternately in 1975 and 1989) and point of view. The story is told from the eyes of the campers, camp counselors, the Van Laar family (truly as unlikeable a group of people as you will ever meet), an enterprising newbie police detective, a serial killer and, an eccentric camp director (whose father before her had been camp director). Clues are dropped. You think you have the mystery solved only to be proved wrong.

A rich and intimate story, God of the Woods is a tale of family and redemption. Whether it is the family you are born into or the one you create. A story of the decisions we make; their consequences and how they reverberate into the future.

Pick up this book if you enjoyed by The Guest List by Lucy Foley or The Searcher by Tana French.