The God of the Woods

by Liz Moore

4 out of 5 stars

*The God of the Woods* is the kind of novel that makes you feel the weight of its ambition before you're fifty pages in; and then, chapter by chapter, earns it.

Liz Moore sets her mystery in the Adirondacks in August 1975, when a thirteen-year-old girl named Barbara Van Laar disappears from the summer camp her family owns. What makes this more than a standard missing-person thriller is what lies beneath: the Van Laars lost another child... a son, fourteen years earlier, and the class dynamics between the wealthy family and the blue-collar community employed in their shadow have been festering for decades. Moore weaves both disappearances together across multiple timelines and perspectives with real control.

What I loved most about this book is how fully it commits to its ensemble. This isn't really a mystery about Barbara, it's a mystery about every person whose life Barbara's disappearance intersects with, and Moore gives each of them the depth required to make that work. The Adirondack setting is rendered beautifully: the lake, the camp, the forest that keeps its own counsel.

The pacing is patient in a way that some thriller readers may find slow, and I'll acknowledge that the resolution, while satisfying, left some threads more open than I expected. But this is the kind of book you read for the experience of being inside it, not just for the answer at the end.

For readers who love literary mysteries, Donna Tartt-adjacent atmosphere, or American dynasty stories with dark undercurrents.

🫖 Tea Pairing: Iced Darjeeling… the kind of thing you'd drink on a camp porch

🎵 Soundtrack: "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell