Heron and the Hidden Worlds

Fourteen-year-old Heron has spent too long hiding from the wilderness-and from the grief that changed his family forever. Then he arrives at SHIWA, the School of Human Interaction With Animals, for a summer in the wilds of Wyoming. Among mountains, rivers, mustangs, eagles, unlikely friends, and mysteries that refuse to stay imaginary, Heron begins noticing something extraordinary: the natural world seems to be noticing him back.

At SHIWA, lessons happen far from ordinary classrooms. Students hike through backcountry, sleep beneath the stars, learn survival skills, sit in ceremony, follow animal tracks, face their fears, and discover what happens when attention becomes a form of listening. Heron arrives uncertain of where he belongs, but the farther he travels into the wilderness, the more the boundaries begin to blur-between human and animal, memory and presence, imagination and reality, this world and the hidden ones beside it.

As strange signs accumulate, Heron is drawn toward a mystery connected to his father, whose death left a silence in his life he has never learned to cross. What begins as a summer adventure becomes a journey through grief, friendship, courage, and the possibility that the people we lose may not be as far away as they seem.

Along the way, Heron finds a tribe of unforgettable companions: fiercely independent Paisley, wildly imaginative Fawn, gentle Nada, grounded Allegra, and others whose paths will continue throughout the WYLD series. Together they encounter wild animals, dangerous terrain, ancient stories, unexplained visions, sacred symbols, hidden beings, and moments that challenge everything Heron thought he understood about nature-and himself.

Heron and the Hidden Worlds is a magical-realist coming-of-age adventure rooted in the landscapes of Wyoming. It is a story about loss and belonging, wonder and wilderness, friendship and transformation-and about what can happen when we stop treating nature as something outside ourselves. For readers who love wilderness adventures, magical realism, animal encounters, spiritual mystery, found family, strange humor, and stories that leave a crack in the door for the impossible.

What if getting lost in the wild is one way of finding your true nature?