This story begins in 2001 on top of Cave M ountain in the Arkansas Ozarks. A six-year-old girl got lost on a mountain trail\, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue miss ion in the state&rsquo\;s history. Her disappearance&mdash\;and her accoun t\, after she was found\, of the &ldquo\;imaginary friend&rdquo\; she met in the woods&mdash\;would eventually become connected to another story tha t took place in the same wilderness more than twenty years earlier: a dark and bizarre story of a cult\, brainwashing\, murder\, and the apocalyptic visions of a teenage prophet.
\nBenjamin
Hale is the author of the novel \;The Evolution of Bruno Littlemo
re \;(Twelve\, 2011)\, the short fiction collection \;The
Fat Artist and Other Stories \;(Simon &\; Schuster\, 2016)\,
and the nonfiction book \;Cave Mountain: A Disappearance
and a Reckoning in the Ozarks \;(HarperCollins\, 2026). \; He
has received the Bard Fiction Prize\, a Michener-Copernicus Award\, and n
ominations for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the New York Public Library's Yo
ung Lions Fiction Award. His writing has appeared\, among other places\,&n
bsp\;in \;Conjunctions\, \;Harper's Magazine\, the \;Paris Rev
iew\, the \;New York Times\, the \;Washington Post\, \;Dissent
\;and the \;LA Review of Books Quarterly\, \;and has been ant
hologized in \;Best American Science and Nature Writing.
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