Bestselling author Liz Moore's latest novel, The God of the Woods, begins with a disappearance. On a summer morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks, camp counselor Louise realizes that one of her charges, 13-year-old Barbara, is not in her bunk. It soon becomes apparent that no one knows what's become of her. Complicating matters is that Barbara is the daughter of the wealthy Van Laar family (who own the camp and a mansion abutting it), and Barbara's brother, Bear, went missing 14 years earlier from the same area and was never found. Oh, and a serial killer who was active at the time of Bear's disappearance has recently escaped from prison and is believed to be in the area.

Moore's narrative structure is intricate; non-sequential chapters bounce among several points between 1950, when the children's mother Alice first meets their father Peter, and ...