The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz
Before tragedy upended her life, Joanna Chase flourished as a young girl on the Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana. She is now 34 years old, living in Santa Fe, and has no clear memories of the past. She starts getting requests via phone, TV, and dreams: “I’m in a dark place, Jojo.” Come assist me if you can. Joanna is drawn to go back to Montana and visit a weird childhood friend she had long since forgotten after giving in to the unsettling calls.
The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz
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She’s not the only one drawn to the homestead in Montana. At the rural ranch, people from all walks of life have gathered. They share the same omniscient threat Joanna came to face and are similarly plagued, on the run, preoccupied, and searching for solutions.
In the meantime, a lunatic with a vision to prevent the future waits on the fringes of Rustling Willows. The only way to bring about his terrifying manifesto is by mass slaughter.
A group of strangers have found themselves under Montana’s expansive, midnight sky as a result of a curious turn of events that at first glance seem to be coincidences. In the midst of their intertwined lives, horror is closing in. If they fail to eliminate this threat, humanity will perish.
Joanna “Jojo” Chase, who is 9 years old and mourning the loss of her recently deceased mother, serves as our main character. Jojo resides in a remote Montana ranch called Rustling Willows. She was raised by her mother Emelia, who taught her to read and fostered Jojo’s love of books and her vivid imagination. As a result, she is a child of stories and dreams. Up until the tragedy that tore Jojo’s world apart with the death of her mother, her upbringing was practically blissful. One night when Jojo is snuggled up watching home videos, she overhears her mother’s voice on the television.
After 24 years, Jojo has matured and stopped using her moniker; she now goes by Joanna. She has accepted her passion for reading and is now a successful novelist who lives in Santa Fe, close to her aunt but content in her own home. She no longer hears her mother’s voice on the television, and it has been replaced by a hallucination of her irrational anguish. Joanna overhears her car starting one evening as she is preparing dinner. She checks and discovers her car idling in the garage with no one else around, which leaves her more perplexed than alarmed. After turning off the vehicle, she doesn’t give it another thought besides taking it to the dealership to be serviced. More enigmatic things start happening around Joanna as the days go by.
Unusual phone calls, dreams of Rustling Willows, and memories of the ranch and the people who once lived there are some of the strange things she has been experiencing lately. She returns to Montana with a burning desire to learn the truth about her upbringing.
A private eye named Wyatt Rider is meeting Liam O’Hara at the same time in Seattle. Wyatt’s friend and self-made billionaire Liam have been purchasing enormous parcels of land in Montana in an effort to preserve the region’s natural beauty. Rustling Willows Ranch was one of Liam’s properties, and he and his family had made the decision to go on vacation there for a week while “roughing it” and enjoying time together.
They came on a Friday and left the home on a Monday after a series of initially magical experiences turned progressively ominous and terrible. Wyatt goes to Rustling Willows after Liam requests that he look into the situation on the property.
