In the summer of 1929, Carl and Helen Bradley bring their teenage children, Logan and Penny, to vacation at the Hotel Monterey in Highland County, Virginia. Despite the beauty of meandering streams and wandering flocks of sheep, the two young people fear there will be little of the excitement they have known in visits to the Atlantic beaches. They see no warning of the mystery-shrouded questions they will encounter or the danger they will face in the search that Jefferson "Topper" Fuller warns them not to begin.

For Penny and Logan, their parents, and Topper, honesty in the presence of...