The Search Party on Ridgeline Trail

In March 2019, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense woodland. Temperatures dropped below freezing that night. Search teams of over six hundred volunteers fanned out across tangled brush and creek beds, calling his name into the darkness. For two days, helicopters circled overhead. Neighbors who had never spoken to each other walked shoulder to shoulder through briars.…