I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review

podcast. This week I'm joined by Liz Moore.

She's the author of the 2020 novel Long Bright River as well as one of this

summer's best-selling novels The God of the Woods. A note for

listeners, Liz and I are going to talk generally about her book, but towards the

end of this episode there's going to be a clearly demarcated spoiler section.

After that, we're going to talk about the ending, among other things.

And if you're still reading the book or if you're hoping to read it, you can just stop then and then come back and listen to the rest when you're done.

Liz, welcome to the book review Podcast. Thank you.

So Liz, your book is a mystery, it's a book about class,

it's a book about summer camp, it's a book about men and women.

That's me describing it.

Why don't you tell us a little bit of what the God of the Woods is about?

So the God of the Woods tells the story of the Van Larr family, who are a very wealthy, dynastic, fictional family,

who've built essentially a mansion in the wilderness of the

Adirandek Mountains of upstate New York. In the 1970s, they send their own daughter to the summer

camp that they have also founded on the ground, but very quickly she

disappears from the summer camp. And the catch is that she's not the first child of theirs to have gone

missing because 14 years earlier their own son went missing from the same grounds, although not the

camp itself. So it's kind of a dual mystery with an upstairs downstairs thing

going on because a lot of the people who come under suspicion are in the family, but then some other people who come under suspicion are members of the local working class community who staff the camp and the house.

So that's the elevator pitch, but yeah're right it delves into a lot of different

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