Set in the near-future, Into the Forest focuses on the relationship between two teenaged sisters as they struggle to survive the collapse of society.

In many ways, Nell and Eva have experienced a near-idyllic childhood, growing up miles from the nearest neighbor in the forests of northern California. Their father, an iconoclastic grade school principal, has decided to keep them out of school, and their mother has encouraged each of them to follow her own passions.

As a result, Eva is determined to become a ballet dancer, while her younger sister, Nell has decided she wants to matriculate at Harvard. Despite the fact that their happy world is rocked when their mother dies of cancer, they and their father are determined to carry on.

Even when society begins to crumble, spurred by terrorism, a distant war, unpredictable weather, and an unstable economy, the little family hoards its resources and attempts to keep up its spirits as they wait for the lights to come back on, the phone to ring, and the lives they have been anticipating to return to them. But when their father is killed in an accident, and a dangerous stranger arrives at their door, the girls confront the fact that they must find some new way to grow into adulthood.

Into the Forest has been called both poetic and a page-turner. It is the kind of book that some readers read slowly in order to savor every sentence, and that costs other readers a night’s sleep, when they find that they cannot put it down.