In answer, Percy sends three generations of the Caves family, father, son, and grandson, on what should be an ordinary camping, fishing, and hiking trip in the woods of Echo Canyon. But these dark and deep Oregon woods promise to be anything but lovely: Fraught with peril, they hide dead human bodies. Animals devour weaker animals, hunters kill and eat deer, manly men eat rattlesnakes, and the locals are as menacing as the coyotes, bears, and wolves. If that isn’t enough, there is an undefined evil, something more than just a possible sasquatch, lurking and watching in the woods.
Justin and his father, Paul, don’t get along and haven’t for years. Paul is a bully who believes that rearing a child is no different from raising a dog. He treats his dog better than he treats his son or his grandson, Graham. Justin tries, with little success, to treat Graham in a way other than how his own father raised him. But what success could Justin possibly have standing up to such a steely father? Despite their many differences, Justin hopes to work things out with his father on this trip, their last one to undeveloped Echo Canyon.
There, Paul is part of the development crew that’s putting in a golf course, a casino, and a lodge. It’s part of Percy’s consumption argument. This time, instead of animals and humans gobbling each other, it’s man and his heavy machinery: bulldozers, backhoes, and front-end loaders chomping and swallowing up the woods.
Justin is not only hamstrung by a poor father-son relationship, but he and his wife, Karen, aren’t getting along. Karen despises Paul, and, of course, she’s against 12-year-old Graham going on the trip. She agrees to let the boy go after warning Justin, “Don’t let [Paul] bully Graham the way he bullies you.’’
