Twenty years ago, three children vanished from their beds in a quiet suburb. One morning, their families wake to find their sons and daughter have returned, grown and naked and deeply changed. Claiming to have found the Garden of Eden, they reveal the bizarre customs of a place that they reverently call "the woods." Devotees there aspire to an animalistic, ape-like state. The rules for living in the woods: No Speech. No Clothes. No Possessions. The commandments are two: Do no harm. Thou shalt not kill. It is these commandments that their parents discover are as crucial for survival in civilization as in the wilderness... For humans, too, are beasts.