The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

What happens when a second child vanishes from the same powerful family, fourteen years apart, in the dense Adirondack wilderness?

In the damp, early stillness of an August morning in 1975, a summer camp counselor pulls back the canvas flap of a cabin to find an empty bunk. Thirteen-year-old Barbara Van Laar is gone. But Barbara isn't just any camper—she is the daughter of the wealthy dynasty that owns the camp, the surrounding estate, and the livelihoods of the local valley. Worse still, she is not the first Van Laar child to disappear into these woods; her older brother vanished fourteen years earlier, leaving behind an empire built on silent grief and toxic inheritances. As a frantic search unfolds across alternating timelines, long-buried secrets begin to surface between the privileged Van Laars and the working-class community in their shadow, turning a missing-person investigation into a suspenseful story of dark family secrets books and hidden pasts.

Why You’ll Love This Book

Moore crafts an atmospheric, slow-burn narrative that wraps you in the damp pine scent and simmering tension of 1970s upstate New York. The multi-layered perspectives pull you deep into the unspoken rivalries between the wealthy Van Laar estate and the local townspeople bound to their service.