Becky's Great Book Reviews The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Liz Moore's The God of the Woods is a brilliant, unforgettable story. Set at a summer camp in upstate New York in 1975, thirteen-year-old camper Barbara Van Laar, daughter of the wealthy camp owners, goes missing.

This proves to be a catalyst for a reinvestigation into Barbara's brother's disappearance fourteen years earlier, when he was only eight years old. The Van Laar family had Barbara to "replace" Bear when it seemed as if Alice Van Laar, Bear and Barbara's mother, could not recover from her grief.

State investigators uncover that Barbara had been sneaking out of her bunk every night to meet someone. The plot thickens when several possible suspects that could be involved enter the picture.

Fluctuating between Bear's disappearance in 1961 and Barbara's disappearance in 1975, Liz Moore seamlessly brings readers into these decades and captures the cultural turning-point in time, especially for women. Investigator Judyta Luptack, the "nation's first" woman in that position, steals the show with her decency and tenaciousness.

An appalling secret, kept that way out of greed and the need to keep up appearances, is the driving force behind Bear Van Laar's disappearance. How it relates to Barbara going missing is the main heart-wrenching mystery of this novel.

Liz Moore's clear, concise writing beautifully lays out the plot while her three-dimensional characters are ones that stick in the mind. This is a story of justice restored, and it is not to be missed. The God of the Woods gets an enthusiastic five stars out of five from this reviewer.