Stuey has always known that the woods growing behind his home was once a golf course built by his great grandfather. And he knows his great grandfather was a rather unscrupulous character—a bootlegger and, he later learns, an anti- Semite. He’s also heard odd stories about the strange disappearance of both his great grandfather and the lawyer who was after him. Most people assume that Stuey’s great grandfather murdered the lawyer and skipped town, but no one knows for sure. Stuey’s grandfather always warned him there were ghosts in the woods, but the woods have always seemed perfectly normal to Stuey, until he finds a mysterious treefall that forms a small shelter, big enough to play in. Things just seem different there—special, and sometimes creepy. It turns out the treefall has also been claimed by another child, a girl named Elly Rose who has just moved in to a house on the other side of the wood. The two quickly become best friends (soulmates, Elly Rose claims). It all seems like the normal stuff of childhood, until the day Elly Rose disappears. Literally. This deliciously strange novel defies the laws of physics but consistently follows its own rules as it moves toward a surprising resolution. (Age 11 and older)

What happened in the woods that day? Pete Hautman’s riveting middle-grade novel touches on secrets and mysteries — and the power of connections with family and friends.

“Hatred combined with lies and secrets can break the world.” Grandpa Zach used to say that before he died, but Stuey never really knew what he meant. It was kind of like how he used to talk about quantum physics or how he used to say ghosts haunted their overgrown golf course. But then one day, after Stuey and his best friend, Elly Rose, spend countless afternoons in the deadfall in the middle of the woods, something totally unbelievable happens. As Stuey and Elly Rose struggle to come to grips with their lives after that reality-splitting moment, all the things Grandpa Zach used to say start to make a lot more sense. This is a book about memory and loss and the destructive nature of secrets, but also about the way friendship, truth, and perseverance have the ability to knit a torn-apart world back together.