Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home

Novelist and true crime author Olsen (The Amish Wife) paints a heartbreaking portrait of a woman haunted by her narrow escape from a serial killer. In 2005, when Shasta Groene was eight years old, a man named Joseph Edward Duncan broke into her Idaho home and murdered her mother, stepfather, and older brother before taking Shasta and her nine-year-old brother, Dylan, hostage. For the next 48 days, Duncan held the children at a campsite in Lolo National Forest, where he tortured and sexually abused them, before killing Dylan. Shasta was rescued when patrons at a Denny’s recognized her and called the police. Through police transcripts and interviews with Shasta herself, Olsen catalogs her ensuing years of drug addiction, petty theft, and volatile relationships, throughout which she was plagued by memories of her attempts to save Dylan. As in Olsen’s previous works of nonfiction, there’s plenty of rigorous research on display, but it’s his empathetic consideration of what happens to high-profile victims after news cameras stop rolling that sets this apart. Though difficult to stomach, it’s moving stuff. Agent: Susan Raihofer, David Black Literary. (Aug.)