A HISTORY OF WILD PLACES

This is Shea Ernshaw's delightfully creepy first adult novel.

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people: dead or alive. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished: a hair ribbon, a lucky penny always kept in a back pocket, a wedding ring, a shoelace. Using these items, Travis is able to see the places a person last walked. But when he receives a call about a missing woman named Maggie St. James, a well-known children's book author who penned a series of dark, macabre stories titled Eloise and the Foxtail, he begins a search for a place many believe is only a legend - a place he believes Maggie might have fled to.

The place is known as Pastoral - a reclusive community founded in the mid 1970's by people looking to live a simpler, slower pace of life. Many believe the commune no longer exists, but Travis finds it... and then he vanishes, just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a life-long member of Pastoral, discovers Travis Wren's abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. Unraveling the mystery of what happened will bring to light all the secrets that Theo, his wife Calla, and Calla's blind sister, Bee, are keeping from one another. They will come to realize that their perfect, secluded life is not as safe as they believed it to be. And that darkness takes many forms.

At the heart of this story is a question: should you fear what lives in shadows... or the light?

Shea is known for her atmospheric, haunting young adult love stories (The Wicked Deep & Winterwood/Simon Pulse), which have been called "wickedly chilling" (School Library Journal), "complex and sweetly satisfying" (Booklist) and "a delectably immersive, eerie experience" (Kirkus). She brings all that and more to A HISTORY OF WILD PLACES, which I'm describing as Lisa Jewell meets M. Night Shyamalan.
Shea Ernshaw is a NYT bestselling author and winner of the 2019 Oregon Book Award. Her books have been published in over eleven countries and her debut novel, THE WICKED DEEP, was an indie Next Pick and has been acquired by Netflix for film adaptation.