North Woods
by Daniel Mason· 2023
This novel takes a single house in the woods of Massachusetts and those who inhabit it across four centuries to explore the ways in which the past lives on in nature, memory, language and the human heart.
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, their humble cabin in the woods becomes the home of a succession of human and inhuman characters alike. An English soldier abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave—only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the past is alive.
Following the cycles of history, nature and language, North Woods shows the ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other. It is a novel about buried secrets and inevitable fates.
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This novel takes a single house in the woods of Massachusetts and those who inhabit it across four centuries to explore the ways in which the past lives on in nature, memory, language and the human heart. When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, their humble cabin in the woods becomes the home of a succession of human and inhuman characters alike. An English soldier abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave—only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the past is alive. Following the cycles of history, nature and language, North Woods shows the ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other. It is a novel about buried secrets and inevitable fates.