Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to good kids. Ten years ago on a hot July night, four children's lives were pulled apart after they went missing for 48 hours in Mirkwood Forest. Now, they're being pulled back together after their savior, a local history teacher known as Cedric LeCruz, is found dead in that same forest. Charlie Braverman, one of the four children, now a nineteen-year-old, has been reluctant to come back to her hometown Glome's Valley. She carefully created a new life at her state college as a seemingly average girl. Despite her desires, she realizes her past is unwilling to let her go. Her life begins to unravel as her estranged ex-almost-boyfriend goes missing and her mother's new mysterious deputy becomes the key to helping Charlie understand what happened in Mirkwood a decade ago, and what is happening in Mirkwood now. But everything is not as it seems in tiny Glome's Valley, and everyone, even Charlie, even the deputy, have secrets of their own.

If you can see them, then you're already dead. If you can hear them, then you're not far from it. If you can smell them, like the forest they live in, then avoid danger at all conceivable costs. Because they're the monsters in the shadows of Harvey Hill's forests, and their king needs his queen.