The Inverted Forest

A failing summer camp forms the backdrop for Dalton's dark latest (after Heaven Lake), a layered consideration of what happens when intentions good and bad collide. Wyatt Huddy, a deformed but mentally intact young man, signs on as a short-notice replacement counselor at the Kindermann Forest Summer Camp in Ozarks country in 1996. To his and his fellow counselors' surprise, the camp's summer season begins by hosting a group of disabled adults from the state hospital. These campers bumble across the page as the central players are fleshed out%E2%80%94na%C3%AFve Wyatt, who keeps being mistaken for a camper; a well-drawn single-mother nurse named Harriet; the reactionary camp owner; a charming but sociopathic lifeguard; and a suspicious program director. As one of the staffer's nefarious plans comes to light, at least one terrible act looms with far-reaching consequences explored in the novel's second part, set 15 years in the future. Though there is tearing suspense surrounding the novel's central crime, and intelligent insight into the characters who surround it, a sense of imbalance persists, as if the crime, world-shaking though it is for some, is not quite convincingly set up. Nonetheless, this is a sensitive novel, richer in character than in plot. (July)