Sean Thomas

Sattler's Woods

​

In April 1992, three middle school boys disappeared while walking home through a dense stretch of woods looming at the edge of their school playground.  Their bodies were discovered five months later, miles away in a remote section of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.  A pedophile, who lived in town with his mother, was quickly arrested and convicted of the crime, despite a lack of physical evidence.  

 

Twenty-two years later, Rory Callahan moves from Philadelphia to Hollingford, the small town in South Jersey where the grisly murders took place, to stay with his ailing mother.  He has lost his job and his marriage, so the move is an escape for him as well.  His initial boredom and sense of purposelessness vanish when he encounters Cindy Thompson, mother of the convicted killer, who is desperately trying to prove her son’s innocence all these years later.  

 

With the help of an idealistic young police officer named Jessica Daniels, Rory soon finds himself searching for the true killer of the three boys, an investigation that takes him to the door of a disturbingly cult-like, fundamentalist church, and into the sinister heart of the small town’s wealthiest, most powerful family.