From the acclaimed author of Blood Sport and Blood Tide, comes another impressing, original work of twisted fiction. In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village. They have given up their frenetic city life to settle in the old Eldridge Place and to start their family.

Quiet and quaint, the village is nestled among the rolling green hills of Hubley's Gore. For centuries, the inhabitants of the little farming village had tilled the soil, eking out a living from the harsh land, bound together by time, by ties of kinship, by their battle against the savage elements...and by the dark secret in their midst. Silent, supreme, it held sway over them. Buried deep in the soil, in the heart of the dense forest, in the soul of the living wood, it commanded the very elements. It demanded obedience and unholy worship and...sacrifice. Laura and Mark are not superstitious, though. They find the local legends charming. But as the seasons turn and the full moon rises, people die in Hubley's Gore in thrall to an ancient, terrible power.