Harassed by an obsessive boyfriend, Alison Reade flees New York City and abandons an academic career to live with an aunt in a cabin on a remote stretch of the Hudson River in the Adirondack Mountains. She lands a job as a whitewater-rafting guide and falls into a summer romance with her charismatic boss. Life is good until she discovers that the Adirondacks are not the safe haven she thought they were.
This is a prequel to Michael Virtanen's first novel,
Within a Forest Dark
, which won the Adirondack Center for Writing's award for best fiction of 2007.