The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: McGinnis, Mindy. Be Not Far from Me. HarperCollins. 2020. Kindle.

The novel is divided into three parts and is narrated in first-person present by the protagonist, Ashley. Ashley is a 17-year-old girl setting out on a hike to a party in the middle of the Smoky Mountains to celebrate the summer before senior year. Ashley loves nature, and frequently hikes with her boyfriend, Duke. She is a competitive track star who has been recruited by a college already, and she dreams of one day hiking the whole Appalachian Trail on her own. She and her two best friends, Meredith and Kavita, walk through the woods together to meet up with the boys, who arrived the day before to go fishing before the big party. When the girls arrive, they discover that the boys have just been drinking and smoking weed. Ashley kisses Duke and looks forward to spending the night with him, but then his ex-girlfriend, Natalie, arrives at the campsite with her friends. To Ashley’s horror, Duke and Natalie start flirting right in front of her. Ashley drinks too much because she is upset, and she gets even angrier when one of the boys makes a joke about Davey Beet getting eaten by a bear. Davey Beet had been Ashley’s camp counselor, and he had taught her everything she knew about the woods. However, after his girlfriend broke up with him, he went into the woods and never came out again. Ashley stumbles off to her tent and passes out. When she wakes up to go pee, she hears something strange and discovers Duke and Natalie hooking up. Outraged and distraught, Ashley drunkenly runs off into the night and crushes her foot under a boulder. She wraps her bleeding foot up in her shirt and passes out again in the grass.

The second part, Ashley wakes up and realizes she is lost, and her foot is severely injured. She tries to make her way back to the campsite, but she cannot find it, and walking is very painful. On the second day, she wakes up cold and hungry. She starts to walk again, but her foot begins to show signs of infection. She eats a worm and hides under a tree during a thunderstorm. On the third day, Ashley wakes up to find a possum chewing on her foot, but she cannot feel anything. She realizes she is going to have to cut it off if she cannot get out of the woods soon. On the fourth day, Ashley continues walking and discovers Davey Beet’s beanie hanging in a tree. She also finds a piece of flint and picks it up, intending to cut her foot off with it. She stumbles across an abandoned trailer someone has been using as a meth lab. She goes inside and finds granola bars, liquor, and pill bottles. On the fifth day, Ashley cuts three toes off her left foot, then cleans it with a bottle of liquor and bandages it. She passes out and wakes up on the sixth day fearing that the owner of the trailer might come back and kill her for knowing where their secret lab is. She decides to give herself one more day of rest. On the seventh day, Ashley kills a mother possum, but lets the baby possums go free. After she eats, Ashley packs up and leaves.

On the eighth day, Ashley finds a carving on a tree left behind by Davey Beet. She remembers going to church and recites Psalm 22 in the woods. On the ninth day, Ashley finds a group of deer who are not afraid of her at all, which tells her she is nowhere near civilization. On the tenth day, Ashley starts to lose touch with reality. She talks to a tree and obsessively thinks about cheese. On the 11th day, a lightning storm starts, and Ashley has nowhere to hide. She runs madly through the woods and falls down hard. She breaks a rib, sprains her wrist, loses two teeth, slices her leg open, and hits her head on a tree. When she lands, she discovers a tent. Inside, she finds the body of Davey Beet. She goes inside and talks to him, then falls asleep next to him. On the 12th day, Ashley steels herself and sets out again. On the 13th day, Ashley tries to eat a fish, but she throws him up and he swims off to have a second chance at his life. She hopes that she gets the same chance. On the 14th day, Ashley sleeps, and a squirrel crawls on her face. On the 15th day, Ashley finds an oil well. She climbs up and sees electric lines. She walks towards them and follows them to a service road. A couple in a truck find her and approach her to help.

In the third part, the couple calls the police and drive Ashley to meet the ambulance. They tell her she has walked all the way to Georgia from Tennessee. She is taken to the hospital and treated. Her father arrives and reunites with her. She is transferred to a hospital near her home, and her friends come to visit her and apologize. She speaks to a reporter about what happened to her and how she found Davey Beet. The college that recruited her for track offers her a scholarship, but she declines and becomes a spokesperson for an outdoors company. After she finishes senior year, she goes back into the woods with proper supplies and sets out to bring Davey Beet home.