From the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club, A Head Full of Ghosts, and The Cabin at the End of the World, a gripping novel in which the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy is only the beginning of unimaginable terrors.
“An atmospheric, gut-twisting descent.” —NPR
Late one night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace.
The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Their feelings of helplessness and sorrow are compounded by anger and frustration: the police have uncovered no leads. The two friends who were with Tommy before he vanished may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were hanging out at a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock.
Living in an all-too-real nightmare, Elizabeth is unprepared for the strange events that follow. She believes she sees Tommy’s ghost in her bedroom, while Kate and other residents claim to see a figure peering through their windows at night. Random pages torn from Tommy’s journal begin to mysteriously appear—entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the Borderland woods; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them all.
As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about Tommy’s disappearance at Devil’s Rock.
