Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks

Novelist Hale (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore) mines his own life for this chilling true crime narrative about two disappearances separated by 23 years. In 2001, Hale’s six-year-old cousin Haley Zega went missing on Arkansas’s Cave Mountain, sparking a three-day manhunt in the Buffalo National River Wilderness. When Haley was finally found on the riverbank, she claimed an “imaginary friend” led her out of the woods and toward the water. A member of the search party then recalled another incident in which a child was murdered nearby in 1978. Hale eventually learned that the victim was three-year-old Bethany Clark, who was killed by members of a doomsday cult and buried at the spot where Haley was found. As Hale tracks down witnesses and former cult members, he pieces together a hair-raising story about a killing supposedly carried out in the name of God. Brainwashing, apocalyptic fervor, and a teenage prophet enter the frame before Hale suggests that Bethany’s ghost led Haley out of the woods. Regardless of whether readers are prepared to take that leap, this is an engrossing and rigorous account of a haunting crime. Agent: Brian DeFiore, DeFiore and Co. (Mar.)