for more than a decade jenna metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother alice who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident refusing to believe she was abandoned jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of alices old journals a scientist who studied grief among elephants alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved yet jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mothers whereaboutsas jennas memories dovetail with the events in her mothers journals the story races to a mesmerizing finish phantoms is gruesome and unrelentingits well realized intelligent and humanestephen kingthey found the town silent apparently abandoned then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm one hundred fifty were dead 350 missing but the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of snowfield californiaat first they thought it was the work of a maniac or terrorists or toxic contamination or a bizarre new diseasebut then they found the truth and they saw it in the flesh and it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined