Once there was only the Curwood Forest between childhood friends, Cassie and Julian. Now there is a whole lot more... Cassie doesn't mind living in a small house by the old Curwood Forest, because just across the river lives her best friend Julian and his sweet, storytelling mother, Violeta. Julian doesn't mind living in a mansion with sweeping gardens that don't belong to him, or having a distant, grumpy man for a father, because he has Cassie and her wildness, her loving parents, and their garden with its rambling veggie patch . But when Violeta is lost from their lives, Cassie begins to fear that nothing can shift the shadow that has settled on her dearest friend. Years later, with Julian at boarding school and becoming more and more of a stranger to her, Cassie finds herself drawn into the mysterious world of her new tutor, Alisa, and she can't escape the growing feeling that everyone around her has something to hide. Then her own parents vanish from her home, and Cassie is thrown into an adventure more wondrous and terrifying than any of Violeta's tales. Can Cassie find her way back to her parents? To Julian? To herself? Or will she take the darker road, one that seems to have been waiting for her all along?