These Silent Woods

May 1, 2021

For eight years, Cooper has been on the run with a dark secret, living in the remote recesses of Appalachia with his young daughter, Finch. No one knows they are there but the somewhat intrusive hermit Scotland and Cooper's friend Jake, who brings supplies each winter. But one year Jake fails to arrive, even as Finch begins resisting their extreme isolation, and Cooper must decide whether he should finally confront his past. From an award-winning poet who has published fiction and memoir with small presses and is breaking out here with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 9, 2021
Cooper, an Army veteran struggling with PTSD and the narrator of this grim and evocative novel of suspense from Grant (Fallen Mountains), is raising his eight-year-old daughter, Finch, in a remote cabin in the Appalachian Mountains. Their only contact with the outside world is an annual visit from Jake, a fellow veteran who brings them provisions for the winter. When Jake fails to appear on the appointed day one December, Cooper is forced to venture into the outside world and confront the violence that has driven him into the wilderness. When his tenuous sanctuary is further threatened by Finch’s growing fascination with a hiker who stumbles across them, tragedy ensues. Meanwhile, Cooper reflects on the brief happiness he enjoyed with his girlfriend Cindy, Finch’s mother, before Cindy died in a car accident shortly after Finch was born. It eventually emerges that Cooper kidnapped Finch from Cindy’s parents, who disapproved of him, and has been hiding from them since. Grant does a fine job of making Cooper sympathetic, despite his obvious faults. The beauty of the book’s prose as well as its deeply felt message of redemption and hope will please many. Grant is a writer to watch. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc.

August 15, 2021
In a desperate move to keep his child, a father goes off the grid. Finch and her father, Cooper, (not their real names) have spent eight years--Finch's entire childhood so far--occupying a remote cabin on a large swatch of forested land in an unidentified, presumably northern state. Grant's second novel sets out to explore how they got there and how they might get out. This chronicle of life in a rustic dwelling with no indoor plumbing and no electricity is an engrossing lesson in survivalism. Cooper and Finch's whereabouts are known to only two people: their reclusive neighbor, known as Scotland, and the cabin's owner, Jake, Cooper's buddy from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. (Jake was severely wounded by an IED but survived thanks to Cooper.) Once a year, Jake brings supplies, and when the novel opens, father and daughter await his imminent visit. They are fugitives from a system that would have taken Finch, then an infant, away from Cooper after Cindy, his wife-to-be and Finch's mother, died in a car crash. Cindy's parents always considered Cooper beneath her. Effectively orphaned, Cooper was raised by a loving but eccentric aunt, and the Army was his sole hope of bettering himself. Finch's thoroughly unsympathetic maternal grandparents enlisted social services to remove her from Cooper's care. How Cooper managed to extract Finch is the major delayed reveal, while Jake's failure to appear with his delivery is the plot's inciting nonincident. A trip to a faraway Walmart is a huge risk but necessary--winter is coming. Scotland has had an unnerving habit of stealthily stopping by. Finch has bonded with Scotland (also a veteran, of Vietnam), but his motives seem suspect. With the arrival, separately, of two strangers, the challenge of disappearing in today's world becomes starkly apparent, as does the flimsiness of the novel's premise. Soulful, meditative, and sad--but marred by an improbable final twist.

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October 8, 2021

Grant's (Fallen Mountains) new suspense novel is a skillful, meditative character study of a flawed yet sympathetic person experiencing PTSD, with themes of redemption, sacrifice, and parental love. Cooper and his eight-year-old daughter Finch live off the grid in a secluded cabin in the Appalachian woods. They are self-sufficient save for a yearly supply drop-off from Jake, a friend of Cooper's from the Army. Jake and Scotland, a nosy neighbor, are the only two people who know where Cooper and Finch live, and only Jake knows their true identities. When Jake doesn't show up for his annual supplies drop, a chain of events threatens to upend Cooper and Finch's life as winter approaches. A carefully planned trip to a store piques Finch's curiosity, and when two strangers unexpectedly enter their lives, Finch is desperate to make a connection to the outside world. Meanwhile, Scotland's visits become more frequent and he insinuates that he knows the truth about Cooper. As Cooper contemplates how to navigate the growing threats to his anonymity, he reflects on the decisions that led to this life of secrecy. VERDICT Grant's evocative prose, nuanced characters, and undercurrent of quiet tension will appeal to a variety of readers.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.