A beast lives in the woods around the lake where the boys' camp sits in a clearing among the trees. So it is said about the Wombo-an ape-like man. It is late spring. We learn that several years ago, the beautiful young wife of a rich old man disappeared from her house across the lake. Who did it? No one knows. The young men working to get the camp ready for boy-campers spend their leisure time sharing "campfire tales" of women and sex-the conversational rites of passage. The narrator, sixteen years old, has his eyes and his mind also on Eleanor-a lady-counselor from the girls' camp on the other side of the ridge. It is a coming-of-age thriller-boys on the edge of manhood, seeking to cope with the devilish forces of glandular curiosity that lead to emotional outbursts, and trouble for some.
