An American documentarian travels a haunted highway across the frozen tundra of Siberia in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Goldenâs Road of Bones, a âtightly wound, atmospheric, and creepy as hellâ (Stephen King) supernatural thriller.
Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness with a dim, dusky sky forever overhead, Siberiaâs Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost within driving distance of the Arctic Circle. A narrow path where drivers face such challenging conditions as icy surfaces, limited visibility, and an average temperature of sixty degrees below zero, fatal car accidents are common.
But motorists are not the only victims of the highway. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Unionâs gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.
Fascinated by the history, documentary producer Felix âTeigâ Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing Life and Death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, âthe coldest place on Earthâ, collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. Only, when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girlâand a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.
Pursued by the otherworldly beasts, Teigâs companions confront even more uncanny and inexplicable phenomena along the Road of Bones, as if the ghosts of Stalinâs victims were haunting them. It is a harrowing journey that will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.