(click the cover for an excerpt.)

Twenty years ago, four boys from the tiny town of Elba, Alabama disappeared. Classmates and friends, they had spent their summers playing baseball and fishing in the Slough Branch of the Pea River. Then, one day, they were gone. No one heard or saw a thing. They simply vanished.

Fourteen-year-old Jeremy "J.J." Johnson grew up with the story of the four lost boys whispered in his ear, first by his now-dead father, and later by his group of misfit friends: Stephen, Kevin, and Paul. Together, the foursome escape their troubled lives and bond together fishing in the same river, playing ball in the same fields, and running through the same woods as those four boys before them.

Until one summer day when the boys find themselves surrounded by a pack of wild dogs. Dogs that seem strangely intelligent and almost-human. And then everything changes. The dogs lead them to a mysterious man who promises them a freedom and joy they've never experienced. All they need to do is a simple favor in return. They agree, blind to the fact they're about to find out exactly what happened so long ago.

Twenty years ago, four boys disappeared.

And now it's happening again.

© 2011 - Jeff Fielder