Who’s Who
This is the who’s who, with only light spoilers.
Here is the promise. I will tell you who each person is, how they connect, and what they want. I will mention that a girl and her brother go missing, since that is the premise. I will not tell you what happened to either of them, or who is hiding what.
The short version: two families, one summer camp, eight narrators, and two summers, nineteen sixty-one and nineteen seventy-five.
The Place
Everyone lives or works on the Van Laar Preserve, a vast private estate in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. At the top of a hill stands Self-Reliance, the Van Laars’ log mansion. Down the slope is Camp Emerson, where wealthy families send their children each summer.
The camp has one famous rule, printed in capital letters around the grounds: when lost, sit down and yell. The nearest town is Shattuck, where most of the staff grew up, and where a paper mill was once the main employer.
How They Connect
Think of three groups. The Van Laars own everything: the land, the bank, the camp. The Hewitts run it. They have guided, built and kept the grounds since the first Peter’s day. And the McLellans advise the Van Laars, as their lawyers, their friends and their godparents.
Then add the people who pass through. Counselors are mostly wealthy camp alumni, while the locals from Shattuck cook, clean and garden. Louise is the exception. Campers come from Manhattan, Long Island and Albany. And the police arrive from Ray Brook, with their own history with this family.
Eight Narrators
The book has ninety-six chapters, and it hands them out unevenly. The investigator, Judyta Luptack, narrates thirty. Louise and Alice have eighteen each. Tracy has fifteen. Carl, a groundskeeper, has six, and Vic, a camp elder, has five.
Then comes the escaped convict Jacob, who gets only three. And the girl at the center of the mystery, Barbara, narrates exactly one. I won’t say where. Keep that number in mind as you read.
The Van Laars
Start with the family. Peter Van Laar is a banker from Albany, formal, controlled, and obsessed with the family name. His wife, Alice, was a debutante who married him at eighteen. She is shy, medicated by her doctor, and lives a quiet, foggy life.
Peter’s father, also named Peter, is the family’s iron patriarch, white-haired and quick to anger. His wife, Helen, says very little. Alice’s sister, Delphine, is witty and bold, the opposite of Alice. And the first Peter, the great-grandfather, built Self-Reliance and founded the camp.
Alice Up Close
Alice deserves a minute. She meets Peter at a debutante ball at seventeen, and by eighteen she is a wife, soon a mother. She is told she is boring at parties, so she learns to drink. Her doctor, Dr. Lewis, prescribes pills for her nerves, and she counts the minutes to five o’clock.
Her chapters move between the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixty-one and the present of the book. She is the key to understanding the household, and she is not as simple as Peter thinks.
Barbara and Bear
Barbara Van Laar is thirteen. She arrives at camp in dyed black hair, army boots and a dog collar, a punk before most of the campers have heard the word. She is the fastest swimmer, she is dry and funny, she is guarded, and she has secrets about where she goes at night.
Her brother Peter, called Bear, was the golden boy. Warm, curious, good at everything, he followed the groundskeeper’s daughter everywhere. He was eight in nineteen sixty-one when he vanished. At camp, his name is spoken only in whispers, and Barbara grew up inside that silence.
Tracy and the Campers
Tracy Jewell is twelve, tall, red haired and painfully shy. Her father is a racehorse trainer who paid her to go to camp. She reads, she can sing, and she hides her glasses. Barbara chooses her as a friend, and that changes her summer.
Around her are cabin Balsam’s other girls, including two Melissas who rule the group. There’s Annabel Southworth, the seventeen year old counselor in training, a ballet dancer from a rich family. And Lowell Cargill, an older boy with a guitar and a shell necklace, whom Tracy adores from a distance. Eight year old Christopher, the youngest camper, notices more than the adults think.
Louise
Louise Donnadieu is twenty-three, the head counselor of Balsam. She grew up in Shattuck, poor, with a mother who drinks. She was salutatorian of her class and won a scholarship to Union College, but dropped out after a year because she couldn’t afford it.
She works at the camp every summer, and she supports her little brother Jesse. She runs every morning, counts to five when she’s upset, and has stayed four years with a boyfriend who represents a better life. Her loyalty will be tested in the first chapter.
The Hewitts
T.J. Hewitt is the camp director. Tall, lean, short haired, in boots and cutoffs, she chews tobacco and says very little. As a girl she was Tessie Jo, following her father around the Preserve. She teaches the campers survival skills and tells them panic is named for Pan, the god of the woods.
Her father, Vic, was the camp’s director before her, and he knows the woods better than anyone. Now he is old and frail. Their family has served the Van Laars for generations, and the Van Laars treat them as staff. Keep an eye on T.J., because Barbara trusts her, and because the camp’s rules, from the compass lessons to the campfire songs, are all hers. The campers fear her and want her approval in equal measure, and the counselors never gossip about her.
The McLellans and Their Circle
John Paul McLellan is Louise’s boyfriend. He is the godson of the Van Laars and the son of their lawyer, charming and entitled. He plans to take over the bank one day. He also drinks and uses cocaine, and when he drinks he can be violent. His sister Marnie is a gallery owner.
Then there’s Lee Towson, a prep chef with a ponytail and a guitar. He juggles spoons, flirts with Louise, and carries rumors about his past that she refuses to believe. The book lets you decide who to trust.
The Investigators
Judyta Luptack, called Judy, is twenty-six. She is from a Polish family in Schenectady, lives with her parents, and is the first woman investigator of her kind in the state police. She is driven, underestimated, and sometimes called honey.
She became a cop because she loved The Mod Squad on television, Her mentor is Denny Hayes, an investigator in his early forties who whistles and smokes in his car. Captain LaRochelle, who runs the search, also ran Bear’s case in nineteen sixty-one. And an older investigator named Goldman remembers that case differently from his boss.
The Town
In Shattuck, the people who work for the Van Laars carry the old case with them. Carl Stoddard was a timid groundskeeper and volunteer firefighter who taught Bear to whittle wood. In nineteen sixty-one, the town blamed him. His wife Maryanne and their daughters have lived with that ever since.
Bob Alcott, a history teacher who runs the local inn, remembers how the Van Laars treated the town. Class runs through this whole book, and the people of Shattuck always sit at the bottom of the table.
Jacob Sluiter
Then there’s Jacob Sluiter, whom the campers call Slitter. He was convicted of murdering eleven people in the early sixties, and in July of nineteen seventy-five he escapes from prison. He heads north through the woods his family once owned.
His chapters are short and chilling. He believes he is owed something by the state. I will only say that he is more tied to the Preserve than the campers realize.
Tracy’s World
Back at the cabin, notice how the girls divide. The two Melissas are the queens, Kim talks too long, and Caroline repeats gossip. Tracy sits at the bottom of that ladder until Barbara sits across from her at lunch.
Tracy’s home life matters too. Her parents are divorced, and her father has a new girlfriend, Donna Romano, a new car and a new rental house in Saratoga Springs. Tracy feels like the one old thing he is replacing.
Small Names Worth Knowing
A few minor characters carry weight. Mitchell, the tall swim instructor, runs the lake tests. Davey, a kind counselor with glasses, once wrote Louise a song. Sam, a nervous new counselor, asks the question nobody dares to ask.
Dr. Lewis is a friend of the family who treats Alice, and the Van Laars trust his advice on everything. Donna Romano, the girlfriend with the Stutz Blackhawk, drives Tracy to camp and drives her father’s whole summer plan. Even small characters here have a reason to be in the room, so it pays to notice who keeps turning up. Mystery fans will enjoy that game.
Who To Watch
Here is the cheat sheet. Judy is your eyes on the investigation. Louise shows you the camp’s hidden side. Alice shows you the family. Tracy is your guide to the girls. John Paul and Lee show you the counselors’ secret nights, and Carl shows you the town’s long memory. T.J. and Vic are the keepers of the land. And Barbara is the question every other character is answering.
If you are starting the book, don’t try to memorize everyone. The author reintroduces names often, and the timelines are marked in each chapter.
Where To Go Next
Want the plot without the character juggling? I have a spoiler free review and a full summary with the ending explained, both on bookexplained.com, on the page for The God of the Woods.
Tell me in the comments which character you trust the least, and why. I am curious whether your pick changes as you read on, or stays put. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next book.
