A History of Wild Places

Travis Wren has an unusual gift: by touching an object, he can glimpse where its missing owner went. Hired to find Maggie St. James—a vanished author of dark children's tales—he follows her trail to Pastoral, a secluded community founded decades ago by people seeking a simpler life and now sealed off from the world by the threat of a disease called the rot. Then Travis disappears too. Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, finds Travis's abandoned truck beyond the border, and the mystery he begins to unravel threatens every secret the community—and his own family—has kept. A haunting blend of psychological thriller and eerie modern fairy tale.