CAVE MOUNTAIN

On a spring day in 2001, a couple brought their 6-year-old granddaughter, Haley, on a hike with friends to Cave Mountain, in Arkansas’ Buffalo National River Wilderness. As author Hale (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, 2011) relates, this was followed was the largest manhunt in the state’s history. Days after being found by locals, Haley told of another young girl who kept her company while lost in the thick foliage of the Ozarks. Unbeknownst to the family at the time, another girl had gone missing in those woods nearly 30 years earlier, when a small cult fled to the mountain in fear of a foretold apocalypse. What begin as intriguing true-crime tales shift into a psychological deconstruction and a philosophical journey attempting to understand the power that religion—specifically Christianity—possesses to influence one’s perception of themselves and reality. Those close to the events, as well as many online onlookers, insist that an angel or ghost of the missing girl helped Haley survive. Although Haley herself doesn’t label her encounter as one thing or another, the author suggests that the power—and insistence—of one’s own belief holds its own kind of power: “A ghost haunts not when it manifests visibly right before our eyes, rattling chains and moaning our names, but when it evades us, when it stays just out of sight, when we think we just saw it flit past a window.” Thus begins a spiraling account, overflowing with repetitive backtracking and tangential crossroads. Digging through mounds of internal reflection on his own relationship with organized religion, as well as interviews of those connected to the cult, Hale eventually concludes, “As in all things, Christianity’s power lies in narrative, and the Christian who believes and has always believed has no story arc. It is the prodigal son, not the faithful one, who needs redemption. Doubt is the essence of faith.” Readers looking for a story thick with deeper ruminations underneath an intriguing true-crime narrative will be satisfied, if not a bit glassy-eyed, by the final page.