The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

This book is on the New York Times Notable Books for 2024 and Obama's recommended reading list, and so it is double recommended and with good reason. There is a mash-up of Gothic novel combined with cautionary tale here. The novel swings back and forth with two time periods when two children from the wealthy Van Laar family have disappeared, 14 years apart. When the novel opens in August 1975, an Emerson Camp counselor discovers that 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar is missing from her bunk. Barbara was conceived after the disappearance of her brother in 1961. Peter “Bear” Van Laar, a boy as playful and adventurous as his nickname, was 8 when he vanished from the Van Laars’ summer house that adjoins the camp and never found. There are several layers to the caution part of the story. The first is that generationally rich people see themselves as different, that the rules do not apply to them, and that attitude serves their communities poorly, but it is not always the advantage they see it as. That is played out here, with intergenerational trauma on view. The second is that there is a very clear cause and effect between the two disappearances that could have been avoided should they been faced but they were not. Finally, this is a wonderful portrayal of the challenges of adolescence, and that money complicates that as well. All told, this is a rich novel with many sub-stories within the overarching one, and it is highly recommended.