The Deciding Light

A dead father. A brainwashed town. And a tunnel beneath the woods that leads to something far more terrifying.

Bart Greene Jr. thought jury duty would be the worst part of his summer. But when the outdoorsman and lifelong outcast returns to his rural hometown of Juniper Collins, he finds something strange has taken place. His former classmates—all recent grads like him—have abandoned their post-high school plans without explanation. Robotic and blank-eyed, they speak only of "helping the town."

Then Bart stumbles across a secret tunnel system beneath his property—tunnels that connect to Juniper Grove, where the brainwashed seniors live.

With a ragtag crew—a casual, adventure-prone best friend, a sharp-tongued girl with a grudge, and a retired Marine turned tech guru—Bart sets out to unravel the mystery. But the deeper they go, the stranger things get: a corrupt mayor who drinks too much and knows too little, violent classmates under someone else's command, and black-ops gumming up the works.

At the center of it all: a species of ultra-intelligent, half-plant, half-human aliens who claim Bart has been chosen… but won’t explain why.