In the summer of 1975, a thirteen-year-old girl named Barbara Van Laar vanishes from her bunk at Camp Emerson, a private camp in the Adirondacks owned by her wealthy family. She is not just any camper: she is a Van Laar, and her disappearance reopens an old wound, because fourteen years earlier her older brother vanished from the same woods and was never found.
Liz Moore braids together the perspectives of the people drawn into the search — a young camp counselor, Barbara's bunkmate, her brittle and grieving mother, and one of the region's first female investigators — and moves fluidly between the 1950s and the 1970s. As the search widens, so does the picture of the Van Laar dynasty and the working-class community that depends on it, each family carrying secrets it would rather keep buried.
Part missing-person mystery, part sweeping family saga, The God of the Woods is a literary novel about class, motherhood, and the long shadows cast by privilege. Atmospheric and intricately plotted, it was one of the most acclaimed novels of 2024.