Thirty-nine, recently divorced, jobless, Benedick Hunter is an actor heading in the exact opposite direction of happily ever after: everything from spending time with his own children to the prospect of dating brings him down. So when he comes across a children’s book his mother Laura wrote, he decides that her life and work–haunting stories replete with sinister woods and wicked witches and brave girls who battle giants–hold the key to figuring out why his own life is such a mess.

Setting out to find out why Laura killed herself when he was six, Benedick travels from his native England to the U.S. in search of her friends and his own long-lost relatives. As he grows obsessed with Laura’s books and their veiled references to reality Benedick enters into a dark wood-a dark wood that is both hilariously real and terrifyingly psychological. It is then that his story becomes an exploration not only of his mother’s genius but also of the nature of depression, and of the healing power of storytelling in our lives.