"Twenty years ago, teenaged Tara Martin disappeared in the dense-some say enchanted-forest known as the Outwoods on the edge of a small town in central England. Her parents and her brother, Peter, feared the unthinkable; her troubled boyfriend, Richie, was the last known person to be with her, but there were no signs of any wrongdoing. Police and neighbors searched the Outwoods for days, but weeks turned into months and her family slowly gave up hope. Tara's disappear- ance was left unsolved. Now, twenty years after her disappearance, a knock at the door on Christmas Day brings an overwhelming sight: Tara, disheveled and exhausted but very much alive. Her explanation for her absence comes hesitantly, and does not seem logical-especially when she con- fides to Peter, now a forty-year-old husband and father, that if she were to tell the full story no one would ever speak to her again. What is most unsettling is that Tara looks barely older than the day she vanished. Tara's tale slowly revealed-is either magical or delu- sional, dreamlike or terrifying. For Richie, who never recovered from the disgrace of suspicion, Tara's return offers the chance to regain the love of his life, although for all the longing he's felt for twenty years, a new black- ness seems to overtake him with Tara's renewed pres- ence. As those who love and missed Tara attempt to understand where she's been for two decades, they begin to ask the same question: Has Tara lost her sanity, or have they?"