November Read: "North Woods" by Daniel Mason 🌽

• Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2023)
• Libby Award Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2023)
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2023)

This Thanksgiving season I picked a book that honors the land around us.

FOUR CENTURIES.
A SINGLE HOUSE DEEP IN THE WOODS OF NEW ENGLAND.

This mesmeric tale takes a single house in the woods of Massachusetts (and those who inhabit it) across 400 years to explore the countless ways in which the past lives on in nature, memory, language and the human heart.

We are introduced to North Woods when a pair of young lovers run away from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin will become the home of an amazing series of human and inhuman characters alike.

An English soldier who has a vision. Inseparable twin sisters. A lovelorn painter. A lusty beetle. A desperate mother and her haunted son. A ruthless con man. A stalking panther. Buried secrets. Madness. And hope.

The story is told in seasons and shows all the magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other. It reads like short stories but all are connected and show us how the past is very much alive.

North Woods will change the way you see the world.

384 pgs
historical fiction/literary fiction
[mash-up of publisher blurbs]