Readers often assume that a novel must extend over large expanses of both time and space to earn the label epic. But in his deliciously imaginative North Woods, Daniel Mason (A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth; The Piano Tuner) upends that conventional wisdom by demonstrating that the story of a single plot of land and the people who inhabit it is a tale that's capable of containing multitudes.
Spanning a period from the middle of the 18th century to an indeterminate future when climate change has irrevocably altered the earth, North Woods focuses on a section of several hundred acres in rural Western Massachusetts first cultivated by Charles Osgood, an English veteran of the French and Indian War who believes "God had willed me to raise an orchard," in his case one that magically springs from a remarkable source. He's a devoted apple farmer, and to house his family he erects a lemon-yellow New England saltbox on the property that becomes the foundational dwelling for those who live on this land over the ensuing centuries.
Beginning with Osgood and his fractious spinster twin daughters, Mary and Alice, who maintain the orchard for more than four decades after their father's death, Mason fashions a parade of intriguing characters (including a handful of ghosts), who experience the full gamut of human life and emotion in this entrancing corner of the world. An enslaved teenager named Esther, a fugitive; painter William Henry Teale and writer Erasmus Nash, who must conceal their mutual affection; and a schizophrenic, known only as "Robert S." in his psychiatrist's notes, are just a few of those whose lives are shaped by their connection to this place. Their stories--often passionate and, occasionally, shockingly violent--are both colorful and emotionally resonant.
Mason is a graceful writer who adeptly juggles an impressive variety of literary styles. In addition to his conventional narrative, he relies on memoir, letters, poems, ballads, psychological case notes, an address to a historical society, a lurid story in a pulpy true-crime magazine, and even a real estate advertisement. He has a taste for the fanciful, reflected in vivid accounts of the travels of a chestnut tree spore that lands near the yellow house, there to spread its blight efficiently, and of an amorous beetle's mating dance that spells doom for the property's elm trees. Mason possesses a deep affection for the natural world, and his story is replete with lush, evocative descriptions of the Massachusetts landscape in every season of the year.
Near the end of North Woods, a character reflects that "the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change." In this strange, enchanting, and memorable novel, Daniel Mason beautifully allows readers to experience that truth most profoundly. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Through the history of one house and the people who inhabit it, Daniel Mason creates an extraordinary story that encompasses an entire world.