John Green · 2008 · road

John Green's 2008 novel, which ends at a real place that was invented. Margo Roth Spiegelman disappears from an Orlando suburb leaving a trail of clues, and Quentin follows them a thousand miles north to Agloe, New York - a copyright trap made up by two mapmakers in the 1930s that somebody then went and built.

1. 1
   Jefferson Park

   An Orlando subdivision where Quentin Jacobsen has lived two doors from Margo Roth Spiegelman since they were children - and at nine they found a dead man in a park, and she wanted to know why and he did not.

2. 2
   Orlando

   Three weeks before graduation she comes through his window at midnight for eleven tasks across the city - catfish, Veet, SunTrust tower, SeaWorld - and the next morning she is gone, and this time nobody finds her.

3. 3
   The Osprey

   An abandoned strip mall she had been living in, found from a clue in a Whitman poem - and Quentin realises he has spent the whole book chasing a girl he invented, which is what the title is actually about.

4. 4
   Agloe

   A real place in the Catskills that started as a copyright trap - two mapmakers invented it in the 1930s to catch plagiarists, and someone built a store on the spot because the map said there was a town there.