The Hiding Kind is a fantasy adventure for the middle-grade reader. It takes place on a small farm in Virginia where twelve-year-old Rick has been left by his mother. It is his grandfather’s farm and Rick hates it. Instead of wide-open prairie skies where he used to live, here are high hedges between each field hiding who knows what? Something rustles in the grasses and he can’t see what it is. The air feels choked off, still, and unmoving so he can scarcely breathe.
Beyond the hedges, deep woods block the sky. The air is filled with the buzz of insects and the stink of cows. At night there are other sounds: owls, foxes, the scream of a rabbit, and the distant bark of a dog. It’s so dark he can’t even see his feet when he goes outside.
His grandfather is recovering from a stroke and needs help, so Rick is here. All his life he has heard whispers about the monsters on that farm. His mother says the stories were never true, his grandfather made them up. But each day he must go out to the dark, cavernous barn alone, the same barn where the stories say one of the monsters first appeared.
Normally, he would have a gang of friends he could call on, but here there is only one neighbor, the crazy alpaca lady at the end of the driveway. Maybe the worst part is that there is no cell service. He can’t even pull up a map to see how to get out of here.
And then something kills the sheep. Their bodies and blood are scattered across the pasture and Rick knows, the monsters are real.