A body is discovered in the woods outside of Maple Crest, New Hampshire, and it is soon identified as that of an immigrant farm worker who was declared missing twenty years ago. The news calls Cadie Kessler back to Maple Crest, which was an idyllic hometown--until it wasn't. Cadie has spent years running from the memories of the summer she was eleven, which started out full of a new friendship and first love, and ended with a terrible tragedy. Now that she's returned, Cadie will fight to protect those she loves from being ruined by secrets that refuse to remain buried. But first she must fight a deadlier foe, one that threatens everything in its path--a forest fire that can't be contained. Dalton's debut is a story of friendship, family, and the consequences of acting out of fear, especially when those actions are performed to protect those we love. The storytelling is made even more vivid by the way the novel practically breathes the woods of New Hampshire.

In Dalton's stirring debut, an entomologist follows the path of the pine beetle from the Rockies to her New Hampshire hometown where the beetles are destroying the trees, leaving them ripe for forest fires. Cadie Kessler is confident she can wake up others in academia to the imminent devastation from the beetles' new migration patterns due to climate change. Cadie's research is interrupted when she receives a text from her estranged childhood friend, Daniela Garcia, warning her the brush clearing launched by Cadie led to the discovery of a dead body that had been buried in the woods 27 years earlier, an unsolved case Cadie and Daniela secretly know a few things about. Dalton slowly teases out the details of who did the killing, who was killed, and why the children helped cover it up in flashbacks involving the girls' childhood friendship with Garrett Tierney, now deputy police chief, and Daniela's undocumented Salvadoran parents, who harbor a secret that puts their entire family at risk. While the withholding of information occasionally frustrates, Dalton does a good job describing the danger and intrigue from the children's point of view. Contemporary ecological and immigration issues compound the well-paced mystery, making for a taut novel that builds suspense to the very end. (Jan.)

Returning home at the request of childhood friend Daniela, forestry researcher Cadie Kessler must face down the dark secret that split them apart one summer long ago. Meanwhile, drought, foreclosure, and wildfires rule the countryside, with tension between locals and displaced migrant farm workers resulting. Prolific award-winning journalist Dalton has won awards for early versions of this debut, and the 150,000-copy first printing bespeaks publisher confidence.