To fifteen-year-old Anne the woods that lie beyond her house are a temporary refuge from her noisy, chaotic family, until one day she gathers her courage & steps into the woods, never to return. Slowly, she makes a new life for herself, learning to forage & to hunt, to build a house from the bounty of the woods & to listen to the voices of the trees. As she endures her first, terrible winter she develops the strength of character that will carry her through the dangers of her unconventional life & the bitter beauty of falling in love, but as the outside world encroaches on her secret existence Anne faces a terrible tragedy.