Jop Illinois, a town, located far away from all other civilization rests as an island in an ocean of corn. Despite the isolation the town is like many others. Children play in the park, women work out in the gym, men sit in diners reading the morning news. The town is quiet and humble. Nothing marks it as a notable destination, or gives it a unique quality to other towns located in the midwest United States. The people are happy with this, as they need nothing more. They all know each other, they know Bethany Culler, the owner of the bank and single mother of twins. She inherited the position of bank owner from her father after he died in a car accident on his way to Chicago. The people know Timothy Wexler, the town sheriff that while dumb as rocks, has a heart of gold and a smile that would charm a cottonmouth. The physician Jon Paul, who people reluctantly trust due to his only recent appearance in the town, Moe Smith, the principal of the elementary school who is rumored to be having an affair with his secretary, Joan Harkness who resents the town with a passion for trapping her into nothing but a miserable life. The people live their lives like clockwork, highschool students hang out at the lake as there is no place better for more than 40 minutes away, the adults drink at the one tavern in town owned by the eccentric Donald Harkness (father of Joan), and anyone who hates drinking goes to the church to play bingo. Those fit none of these are damned to a life of boredom as in this town nothing changes, most of the families of been the same for well over 100 years and newcomers became increasingly rarer and rarer as time progressed. Nothing ever happened in the town, nothing happened. 

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One day young Jolie Strong was walking home from school, it was a cool autumn day and the first day where a jacket was necessary to the people of Jop. Jolie was a middle school student who strived to be independent. In the morning she made her own breakfast of 2 eggs and 3 strips of bacon, packed a lunch of a ham sandwich along with a fruit and some kind of juice. She would walk to and from school despite the objections of her older sister Liz who suggested she just drive her there and back. Liz never understood Jolie's obsession for independence, but it was because Jolie hated the town of Jop, she believed that if she was independent of others, maybe she could emancipate herself from this town that she so desperately wanted to leave. It was on this walk home from school that Jolie would leave her normal route. She decided to take a more difficult route, not because of some need to live on the edge, but more because the poem they had read in class that day, "The Road Less Traveled" by Robert Frost. It had inspired her in a sense. She decided to take a path through a small forest up ahead, it was not big, however it did offer a new route. It didn't have a path through it but it was indeed a road less traveled just like she envisioned. Before entering the woods she saw her mother drive by, they waved to each other and Jolie entered the woods. It was at this location that the police would later start the investigation of her disappearance.