Although decades have passed since I was a camper and then counselor at an overnight camp on Cape Cod, I can easily trace the contours of that place, now closed, and navigate, in my mind, all the way from the bay to the Big House. I can conjure the sound of taps on the PA system, the slap of a cabin’s screen door, and the chatter of children.
I’m not the sole possessor of such vivid memories, or of such nostalgia. Even people who never went to summer camp can have a kind of obsession with them – what they symbolize, what purpose they serve in the American cultural tapestry. So when I heard that Liz Moore’s new novel, The God of the Woods, takes place in fictional New York summer camp, I couldn’t wait to read it.
The story begins in 1975, when a counselor named Louise wakes up to find that one of her campers is missing. Barbara Van Laar is a special child: she is the daughter of the camp’s wealthy owners who live on the property and she is the younger sister of a boy who also went missing years ago. Bear Van Laar was last seen heading into the woods, and speculation abounds as to what became of him. Standing above Barbara’s empty bed, Louise is scared of what has happened to the second Van Laar child and also, not insignificantly, of what will happen to her if Barbara isn’t found. Louise “imagines herself returning, for the rest of her life, to this place and this moment: a lonely time traveler, a ghost, haunting the cabin called Balsam, willing a body to appear where there is none.” But Barbara is gone – into the woods, it seems, without leaving even the trace of a breadcrumb.
From this opening scene, the novel travels back in time as far as the 1950s, when Bear and Barbara’s mother, Alice, meets their father, Peter Van Laar, in New York City. From the start, Alice and Peter have an awkward arrangement – it’s clear that something is not right between them, but what’s wrong is just one of several mysteries that Moore presents: What happened to Bear? Where is Barbara? What’s wrong with Alice? What’s wrong with Peter? And what or who is it that lurks in the woods picking off children and suffocating adults in quiet despair?
Told from the perspective of a number of distinct characters, and looping deftly through time, Moore’s narrative satisfyingly doles out answers like white pebbles along a darkened pathway in fairy-tale moonlight. As I sped through this story’s pages, I fell completely under Moore’s spell, confident that the mysteries would eventually be revealed. Along the way, I realized that, for me, reading The God of the Woods was a lot like being at summer camp, where new people, old legends, and certain closure are a joyful guarantee.
