When a small group of strangers sets out on a winter trek through Wisconsin’s remote Driftless Region, the journey quickly turns into a fight for survival. Injuries mount, the cold closes in, and it becomes clear that the dangers stalking the forest are not only natural. As fear and suspicion fracture the group, Mara Keene must navigate a landscape that is as psychologically hostile as it is physically unforgiving—where every decision carries consequences, and escape may come too late.
When a small group of strangers sets out on a winter trek through Wisconsin’s remote Driftless Region, the journey quickly turns into a fight for survival. Injuries mount, the cold closes in, and it becomes clear that the dangers stalking the forest are not only natural. As fear and suspicion fracture the group, Mara Keene must navigate a landscape that is as psychologically hostile as it is physically unforgiving—where every decision carries consequences, and escape may come too late.
Prologue
Frozen branches lashed her arms, but Mara didn’t dare stop. Not now. Her lungs burned, throat cinched as if stitched shut, legs stumbling as the trail curved.
Then—her foot snagged. She pitched forward, catching herself hard on one knee. A flat layer of sticks, snow-dusted and lashed with yellow paracord, lay almost flush with the trail.
Concealment.
She squinted, leaned, pulled at a corner.
The lattice peeled back with brittle snaps. Beneath, five feet down: sharpened stakes, their tips damp and blackened. A spool of rusted barbed wire coiled like a serpent. Past that, a pair of plow blades—old, heavy, dulled by years until someone had sharpened the edges bright again.
A pitfall.
Not an accident. Not nature.
Deliberate.
Fuck.
She dropped the cover, staggered upright, and ran.
The trail forked, splitting around a cluster of pines. She veered into the crook, branches thick enough to hide her, she hoped. Crouching low, she pressed back, breath slicing shallow through her teeth. Her muscles trembled with the effort to stay still.
Then—boots. Pounding through deep snow, relentless. A figure burst through the trees, hammering down the very trail she had just fled. Their breath tore ragged from their chest, head jerking back as though something stalked them.
Too far for a face—just motion, frantic and wrong.
Closer. Faster. Straight toward her.
Mara’s pulse lashed. She pressed deeper into the fork, snowflakes clinging to her lashes. The figure’s sprint looked aimed for her, as if they’d already marked her. If they weren’t the killer, they’d need help.
She tried to brace for flight, but her body refused, trembling violently. Closer now—wild, uncoordinated, not even looking forward. And then the thought slammed her: They hadn’t seen the pit.
Her throat clamped harder, strangling the cry before it formed. If they’d built it, they’d skirt the edge. But their boots thundered straight down the center.
Humans help humans.
The urge came primal, brutal.
One second. Two.
They were almost on it.
Her voice ripped free, raw, cracking the silence.
“Stop!”
The figure’s head snapped toward her. A beat of hesitation—then they surged faster, as if chased by something unseen.
Mara’s hand tore at the air. “Stop!”
The false ground gave way. Wood snapped. Snow collapsed. The figure vanished with a sound so sharp it seemed to split the forest itself. Then the impact rose, layered and ugly: sticks splintering like bone, wire shrieking against flesh, and finally the blunt, wet crack of body against hardness—subdued, smothered, as the frozen earth swallowed the noise.
Silence flooded back, heavier than before. Only her breath proved the world still moved.
It cut through at last.
A guttural sound, faint and wet, not quite a word but something primal—life leaking out slow, stubborn, unwilling to be finished.
Whatever was down there was still alive.
Humans help humans, she thought, staggering toward the pit. Dr. Hill’s voice, her own, something ancient braided between them.
Chapter 1
Mara tightened her grip on the wheel. Snow—no, sleet—slanted across the windshield, streaking beneath wipers that never caught up. The defogger wheezed, too hot, then too cold, until the glass blurred again.
The road was a thin ribbon of gravel between bare trees, just wide enough for one car. She imagined headlights rushing at her from the opposite direction, nowhere to swerve. Or worse—something older, slower, a horse-drawn carriage rattling out of the Wisconsin woods like she’d slipped back a century.
CarPlay chirped directions in its calm, not-so-synthetic voice, though the “No Signal” badge had glared for miles. GPS was supposed to work without service—satellite magic, she guessed—but it hadn’t stopped her from looping what felt like the same half-circle of rural backroads, over and over.
She couldn’t shake the thought that she’d botched the address. Maybe when she copied it from the confirmation email, one of those nonsense rural numbers—N16482—got scrambled. She saw it clear in her mind, digits swimming, just enough to convince her she’d done it wrong.
Her stomach knotted. She should stop, cancel the route, reenter it. Double-check. Triple-check. Except—no bars. Without service, retyping it meant staring at a blank screen. Didn’t it? She wasn’t even sure the map would stay alive if she touched anything.
The voice repeated itself, patient, certain.
“Continue straight.”
Straight where?
The road narrowed, gravel overtaking asphalt, sloping into fields blurred by half rain, half snow. Her eyes flicked from windshield to screen to rearview and back again.
Nothing. Just her.
Her chest locked. Breath shallow. She hunched toward the wheel, nausea rising. Did I get the wrong address? Did I make a wrong turn? She imagined herself circling forever, fuel burning low, snow thickening, no signal, no help.
The voice chirped again.
“In two hundred feet, turn right.”
Her laugh cracked out loud, brittle, half mad.
Sure. Right fucking where?
Her back ached, eyes straining, nausea climbing—panic winding sharp and stupid through her chest.
Six months ago, she couldn’t drive at all. Then came Dr. Hill and his cursed “exposure” work. Short drives. One block. Then two. Then merge onto a highway and sit with it. Now she was three states from home. Alone. In February.
The symptoms arrived anyway—fast, merciless, like weather breaking. Her vision narrowed, the windshield shrinking to a tunnel. The steering wheel rattled in her grip, lane-keeping jittery, as though the car itself shook with her.
She felt cold sweat slicked along her ribs. Her thighs locked, bracing for a crash that hadn’t happened. The hiss of wipers grew deafening, sleet like static on her ears.
Once, months ago, she’d been so certain she’d pass out behind the wheel she wet herself, trembling as semis roared past like metal beasts. This wasn’t that bad—not yet. But the memory lurched up in a half gag anyway.
Her hands clutched tighter, as if the wheel were the last thread keeping her alive. Her heart galloped, too fast, too hard. Louder than tires, louder than wipers.
Is this a heart attack? If she fainted, if she let go, she would crash out here alone. Probably die.
The car swayed with her fear, harder than it should have. A phantom wobble whispered: flat tire, blown axle, you’ll lose control.
Her body believed it. Every motion, every hiss of sleet. Her body believed everything.
Then—there. A square post, paint chipped, topped with a wooden triangle:
Driftless Cabin Co. →
Mara let out a sound, half laugh, half sob. The car rolled smoother as she turned. Maybe she hadn’t blown a tire after all. Maybe she was the wreck.
Another sign appeared a hundred yards in, beneath a timber overhang. She braked. A mounted map displayed six cabins along a looping one-way road, each with a number and name.
She rolled down her window and tapped her phone for the text she’d received earlier that day:
Your Driftless Cabin retreat is waiting.
You’ll be staying in Sophie – Cabin 3.
Use keycode 2137 to enter.
Reception is limited at camp. Disconnection is part of the experience.
Welcome to your stay.
Number three. Sophie. Pretty, though the name carried a taste Mara couldn’t quite swallow—ironic, maybe, or too close to history she’d rather not revisit. Still, she let it be. The cabin was in the middle, tight between the others. Snug. Secure.
Beside the map hung a metal phone box with a placard:
For a personal welcome, ring the groundskeeper.
“No, thank you,” Mara muttered. Relief poured through her shoulders like warm water. She put the car in park.
For the first time since leaving the interstate, she breathed all the way out. Her grip slackened. The world widened, slow, grudging, as if pried open. Her eyes stung. A jagged laugh shuddered loose, broke into a sob she hadn’t known she was holding.
It counted. She was here, upright, breathing.
She drew in damp pine and thawing soil. The sleet softened into wet flakes. Pulse slowed, leaving that strange emptiness—panic’s comedown. Flu-like good sick—that strange, swirling emptiness panic left behind. Almost euphoric. Nothing in the world relieved like terror draining away.
This was it. Three nights. Proof she could do it—be it—whatever Dr. Hill thought she could be.
The woods shimmered around her, briefly transformed. The sleet had eased into heavy flakes that drifted sideways on the wind, pale sheets sweeping across the pines. Every branch wore a glimmering crown of snow, each trunk banded in white as if the whole forest had been carved from sugar. But with green pine and yellow grass emerging like a hint of spring.
It was beautiful, almost impossibly so—a postcard no one else was around to see.
Then she glanced into her rearview. The tire tracks she’d left only minutes ago, the proof that she had come this way, were gone. Wind, slush, and snow had already smoothed them flat, erased her presence as if she’d never been there.
The thought landed: She could vanish here, folded into the woods until no one remembered she’d tried.
It was irrational. She told herself that. Still, her stomach knotted. Relief only held so long against the knowledge that she hadn’t seen another human being in hours. No headlights, no farm trucks, no figures on porches. Nothing.
Isolation pressed in from every side.
She exhaled hard, willing herself to take the gift of shelter as enough. At least she’d reached the cabins. She’d have four walls, a roof, even heat. She could ride the storm out. But the snow thickened as she watched, and she suspected what her gut already knew: She wouldn’t be driving back out on those roads until the weather cleared. That could be tomorrow. Or it could be days.
Mara put the car in gear, rolled up her window, and followed the loop road toward Cabin 3.
Sophie.
First of all let me say that I'm a big fan of survival thrillers/horror stories. People fighting the elements in a seemingly impossible situation while being pursued by someone or something is always a nerve wracking reading experience.
For the most part, that's exactly what we have here. Our main character, Mara, suffers from severe panic attacks but through the advice of her therapist, has found the courage to step outside of her own doom inspired thoughts to go on a nature tour with a group of strangers deep in the woods during winter.
It doesn't take long for the situation to go awfully awry as someone has set a booby-trap on the path which causes their wagon and tractor to fall over making it inoperative.
Their guide, Willy, ventures out to gather firewood because there's a huge snowstorm brewing. He's never seen alive again.
Now it's up to this group of strangers to navigate the harsh conditions with barely any supplies and injuries from the wreck taking their toll. But there are traps in these woods and someone is stalking them.
The setting of this rugged environment plays as an antagonist throughout the book, perhaps more dangerous than whoever is stalking the group. You'll feel the biting winds, the cold, the insidious uncaring side of nature. It's effective and eerie.
It's in the last few chapters where the reveals spring to life. Who's the killer, why are they doing it, and there's even yet another twist about one character that stretches the imagination but was a welcome unexpected surprise.
If you like harsh environments and people struggling to survive, chances are you're going to devour this book. I know I did. I just wish we could have gotten to the "meat" of the excursion sooner than the last few chapters. Not that it didn't build tension (it certainly did) but because fitting all the secrets in the end made some of the earlier things seem insignificant. And I actually enjoyed those earlier moments more. But that's just me. It's still an exciting atmospheric read and I do recommend it.