At This Summer Camp, Ticks and Archery Aren’t the Biggest Dangers

THE GOD OF THE WOODS, by Liz Moore

Liz Moore’s “The God of the Woods” opens in nostalgic territory: It’s 1975, and Barbara and Tracy are cabin mates at Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks.

Tracy is 12 and gawky, only there because her father has forced her to attend so he can spend more time with his new girlfriend. (Her parents are divorced — yet another factor that’s adding to Tracy’s feelings of awkwardness and disconnection.) Barbara is a mature and rebellious 13, coolly self-assured and into punk rock. She’s also the only living child of the extremely wealthy family that founded the camp.

As summer progresses from camp’s early days to the annual survival trip to the final dance, the girls form a bond of friendship and fascination, broken only on the morning their counselor wakes up and notices that Barbara’s bunk is empty.

Those of us with fond memories of summer camp (mine was Al-Gon-Quian in northern Michigan) will recognize the way campers enter into intense relationships, test themselves against childhood fears and begin to grow into who they’ll become, all under the less-than-watchful eyes of young counselors concerned with dramas of their own.

When Barbara’s counselor, Louise, realizes that one of her campers is missing, she knows exactly what’s at stake: Barbara is one of the Van Laars. Her summer house looms over the camp. Moore writes of this family, “They function as a distant presence on a hill to the north, frequently sighted local celebrities about whom the children and counselors of Camp Emerson speculate and gossip.”

It turns out that, instead of watching over her charges the night before, Louise was at a clandestine campfire with her secret boyfriend, John Paul McLellan, a godson of the Van Laars. She fears losing her job and having to return to a dismal home life with an alcoholic mother in Shattuck, the drab, working-class hamlet nearby.