I have a long family history in the Adirondacks. Four of my ancestors moved there in the early 1800s, lured from other parts of the northeastern United States by talk of plentiful arable land. But they soon discovered that the rocky mountain terrain there actually makes it difficult to sustain a farm, and they settled just south of the Adirondacks, where my grandmother and mother were born and raised.
My grandparents did build a summer home there (much different in scale than the “great camp” in the book — ours is more like a small wooden cabin). The cabin still stands; I grew up going each summer, and I bring my own children there to this day. My personal experience of the place, along with the many spooky stories — both real and invented — my family liked to tell, informed the atmosphere of the novel.
― Liz Moore, Interview, Bookweb
What booksellers are saying about The God of the Woods
- I love when books dissect the stark differences between the rich and the poor. Some of the chapters left me feeling deeply uncomfortable and frustrated, but it always served purpose to the plot and what was being said. I didn’t love every character, but I still managed to feel some kind of empathy for them, minus the patriarch of the Van Laar family.
― Missy Kelly, Novel in Memphis, Tennessee | BUY
- The God of the Woods is a grand sweeping mystery about two lost children from an Adirondack estate home to an exclusive summer camp. Liz Moore intertwines the lives of all involved with meticulous sophisticated storytelling that causes the reader to completely lose themselves puzzling each new development. There are characters to love and root for and those to despise, whose neglectful behavior is abhorrent. This is grand story that was a pleasure to witness. Liz Moore’s writing gets better with each book, amazing!
― Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia | BUY
- Liz Moore has written a mesmerizing tale of wealth and privilege and how trying to keep up appearances impacts others for years to come. This is a beautifully written story of a love for the land and of the people who try to encourage others to feel the same way but at the same time how they must go along with things that are against all they believe in order to protect those they love. When a 13-year-old girl disappears from a prestigious summer camp, the past comes barreling back to raise questions that should have been asked when her 8-year-old brother disappeared from the same area 14 years earlier and was never found. You will get to know all of the characters intimately – some you will despise; some you will pity and others you will root for. This is as much a story about family dynamics – the good, the bad and the very ugly – as it is about the disappearance of two children years apart.
― Nancy McFarlane, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina | BUY
About Liz Moore
Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was a Good Morning America Book Club pick and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, as well as the acclaimed novels Heft and The Unseen World. A winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia
