"[A] splendidly written mystery . . . a compelling story. Grade: A" —Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Subtle, distinctive and well-wrought." —Washington Post

Hired by a developer to dowse a lonely forested valley in upstate New York, Cassandra Brooks comes upon a girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities, however, the body has vanished, calling into question her sanity—at least until a dazed, mute girl emerges from the woods, alive and eerily reminiscent of Cassandra’s vision of the hanged girl. Increasingly bizarre divinations ensue, leading Cassandra back to a past she thought long behind her, locking her in a mortal chess match with a killer who has returned from the past to haunt her once more.

"Sublime . . . creates a seamless breathing breathtaking unity of the literary and the suspense novel, detonating the very notion of genre. Riveting, insightful, sentence-by-sentence charged with feeling, it bears us, helpless, with it on its downward journey to illumination." —Peter Straub