Late on a warm summer night in rural Missouri an elderly camp director hears a squeal of joyous female laughter and goes to investigate At the camp swimming pool he comes upon a bewildering scene his counselors stripped naked and engaged in a provocative celebration The first camp session is set to start in just two days He fires them all As a result new counselors must be quickly hired and brought to the Kindermann Forest Summer Camp One of them is Wyatt Huddy a genetically disfigured young man who has been living in a Salvation Army facility Gentle and diligent large and imposing Wyatt suffers a deep anxiety that his intelligence might be subnormal All his life hes been misjudged because of his irregular features But while Wyatt is not worldly he is also not an innocent He has escaped a punishing home life with a reclusive and violent older sister Along with the other new counselors Wyatt arrives expecting to care for children To their astonishment they learn that for the first two weeks of the camping season they will be responsible for severely developmentally disabled adults all of them wards of the state For Wyatt it is a dilemma that turns his world inside out Physically he is indistinguishable from the state hospital campers he cares for Inwardly he would like to believe he is not of their tribe Fortunately for Wyatt there is a young woman on staff who understands his predicament better than he might have hoped At once the new counselors and disabled campers begin to reveal themselves Most are well-intentioned others unprepared Some harbor dangerous inclinations Among the campers is a perplexing array of ailments and appearances and behavior both tender and disturbing To encounter them is to be reminded just how wide the possibilities are when one is describing human beings Soon Wyatt is called upon to prevent a terrible tragedy In doing so he commits an act whose repercussions will alter his own life and the lives of the other Kindermann Forest staff members for years to come Written with scrupulous fidelity to the strong passions running beneath the surface of camp life The Inverted Forest is filled with yearning desire lust banked hope and unexpected devotion This remarkable and audacious novel amply underscores Heaven Lakes wide acclaim and confirms John Daltons rising prominence as a major American novelist.
