The Boy in the Mirror

When four-year-old Oliver Wright tells his mother, "I want my real family," Lauren dismisses it as childish fantasy. His irrational fears seem just a phase of growing up. But she is soon confronted with the stunning possibility that something sinister lies behind it.

Four years before, two people died only two days apart in a church camp at the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley. Sheriff's deputies classified both as accidents, but as they looked deeper, they determined the death of a teenaged woman took place after a physical altercation. They focused their attention on one unlikely suspect as parents reacted in anger, closing the camp. But what about the youngster whose body was found floating in a lake soon thereafter? Was this the accident it appeared to be? Is there a connection between the two deaths?

As Lauren Wright probes her child's imaginary past with single-minded determination, his stories lead her to a corner of southwestern Virginia. The camp deaths and Oliver's memory collide, imperiling Lauren's marriage and Oliver's life.