Whose Woods These Are takes place on Thanksgiving Day in a deep river bottom in a mythical Piedmont county, Morgan, South Carolina, a creation carried over from John Lane's first novel, the award-winning Fate Moreland's Widow. The story is told in four perspectives on the possible death and certain disappearance of Old Doc, an 85-year-old land owner/deer hunter and centers on a contested property boundary shared with the resident Mitchell family who have lived on the land since colonial times. Four intricately layered stories spool out as Thanksgiving Day progresses: that of Jae Mitchell, the young hunter with deep connections to the land; deputy sheriff Caddy Galligher, Jae's former girlfriend and mother of his young child; Daren Pagano, Old Doc's scheming real estate agent step son; and Sheriff Howard, near retirement, a hunting buddy of Old Doc who believes what his deputy Caddy tells him, that Jae Mitchell wouldn't kill anybody. All have their stakes in what happened in the river bottom and as the day unfolds, nobody can locate the suspect or the victim, so the four stories turn into a search for the truth in the deep woods.