On Ruby’s 13th birthday, a wish she didn’t even know she had suddenly comes true: the couple who raised her aren’t her parents at all. Her real mother and father are out there somewhere, and Ruby becomes determined to find them. Venturing into the forest with nothing but a suitcase and the company of her only true friend --- the imaginary Shadow Boy --- Ruby discovers a group of siblings who live alone in the woods. The children take her in, and while they offer the closest Ruby’s ever had to a family, Ruby begins to suspect that they might need her even more than she needs them. And it’s not always clear what’s real and what’s not --- or who’s trying to help her and who might be a threat.

Newly single mom Beth worries that her eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, who has a tendency to wander off, will one day go missing. And then it happens: The two get separated at a local outdoor festival, and Carmel vanishes. Beth sets herself on the grim and lonely mission to find her daughter. Carmel, meanwhile, is on a strange and harrowing journey of her own --- to a totally unexpected place that requires her to live by her wits, while trying desperately to keep in her head a vision of her mother.