I thought I knew what I was getting into when I picked up Benjamin Hale’s Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks (HarperCollins Publishers). It is billed as a combination of true crime and memoir; the author investigates an event that shook his personal history to draw connections to the broader world. Reading Hale’s book, however, I found more than I imagined. Hale uses the brief disappearance of his cousin as a starting point for a rumination on human cruelty, religious drive and the potential (or potential lack) of a higher power. It is factual and ruminatory, a gentle but purposeful walk through the past.
Cave Mountain starts with the 2001 vanishing of Hale’s 6-year-old cousin Haley Zega on a mountain trail in Arkansas, prompting a massive search-and-rescue effort that proves successful — though no one can explain the “imaginary friend” Haley claimed to have made in the woods. Hale then winds the clock back another 20 years to recall a cult that once existed in the area, and its tragic crimes. Hale’s tale eventually encompasses a second cult, tangentially related to the first, and his own fraught relationship with religion. The book’s progression is intriguingly unpredictable, and many chapters read like individual essays, which contributes to the overall sense of strange interconnectivity.
It is worth noting that Hale grows more compelling as the book progresses. The first chapters of the book focus on the factual, with Hale’s personal POV slipping into the text only occasionally. He takes moments to address discrepancies between facts and perceptions, noting how different members of the search party remembered events in conflicting ways. This is a smart, subtle way to lay the groundwork for later sections; when he explores religion and cults, the difference between fact and perception is the core conflict.
One of the most fascinating facets of the book is Hale’s own journey as he writes it. Cave Mountain is about Hale’s search for goodness and grace as much as it is about his cousin. The reader gets to watch him move through colder, crueler versions of himself. He can be (ironically) sanctimonious in his opposition to religion, a devout worshiper of the absence of higher power. The reader sees his softening and self-reflection over time. Hale even acknowledges how books like his own can be dangerous, especially when participants in the events are still alive. It helps us appreciate his seriousness, knowing where he comes from.
I appreciated Hale’s approach. In the book’s conclusion, we return to the scene of Haley’s disappearance, with the adult Haley and Hale literally retracing her steps. In making this choice, Hale quietly reminds us that this book, though factual, is told through his own lens. Belief in strictly the corporeal is still belief.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s July 2026 issue.
