The small town of Mattingly is in a world of hurt. Its residents have faced an evil man, and then a Storm damaged homes, stole lives, and left 11-year-old Allie Granderson motherless. Oh, her father is still there…mostly. In the evenings, he finds solace in the liquor he has hidden in his bedroom closet. Allie sits in her room every night with her dog, Sam (short for Samwise…and if there was ever a more perfectly named dog, I don’t know who it would be), waiting to see if her daddy will come out of his room or if it will be the Other Daddy who appears when the liquor has been consumed.

For 543 days, Allie and Marshall Granderson have trudged along, stuck in the unreasonable truth that their Mary, beloved mother and wife, is gone. All that’s left of Mary, after the Storm, is a tennis shoe. Allie is quite certain, though, that Mary is not dead but simply away, carried off by the wind. Held captive perhaps somewhere? Prevented somehow from returning to her family? Allie is not certain. As they mark the time and the days since the Storm, she and her father are just waiting…but for what, they can’t quite imagine.

"Coffey’s prose quietly elevates the reader in ways I’ve rarely seen in fiction as his story and characters captivate us and hold us close."

But it’s almost Christmas, when magical events happen…and adventures begin. Another terrible wind carries off the Virgin Mary from Allie’s Nativity scene. The figure is torn right out of the front yard, leaving Joseph and baby Jesus alone and bereft. The broken compass Allie wears on her wrist, the last gift given to her by her mother, suddenly begins to work and points the way to the woods. Allie is sure it’s providing directions for the journey the children are about to take. She collects Samwise and her best friend, Zach, and they set off to find the Nativity Mary. And in Allie’s secret heart, she believes they’re going to find her mother as well.

Allie is broken. But she is certain that her compass is going to lead her to all that is missing, and in this journey, all her brokenness will be healed. She and Zach cannot imagine the adventure, terror, heartbreak and loss that are before them. And just as they cannot imagine the darkness that is before them, they cannot imagine the light before them as well, hidden in the dark wood…and within them.

I don’t know if Billy Coffey meant for this book to be an allegory, but it felt like one to me --- hidden deep under the story of a young girl, her dearest friend and her faithful dog, searching for the impossibilities for which they’re longing. It seemed like allegory the way the Narnia books do. But IN THE HEART OF THE DARK WOOD is darker than Narnia, perhaps closer to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books in tone. Coffey has the gift of unfolding a story in ways that are never predictable to the reader; from one page to the next, I could not figure out what was going to happen to Samwise and the children. And I couldn’t quit reading either, compelled to pore over the book to discover its mysteries and magic. Yet, when the story was over, I felt that it couldn’t possibly have ended any other way.

Paired with Coffey’s unpredictability of story is a manner of prose that recalls the greats of Southern literature like Harper Lee, Katherine Anne Porter and Flannery O’Connor. Coffey’s prose quietly elevates the reader in ways I’ve rarely seen in fiction as his story and characters captivate us and hold us close. I’ll never forget Allie, Zach or Samwise, and their tale of adventure in the dark wood. In fact, I know that IN THE HEART OF THE DARK WOOD is a book I’ll return to again and again. I’m quite confident that you’ll feel exactly the same.