A literary micro-history of New England, Daniel Mason's North Woods uses one cabin as a springboard to explore America's evolving identity.

Beginning with a Puritan couple, Mason seamlessly weaves together fictionalized versions of familiar events. After the Puritans, a captivity narrative (that ends a la Hannah Duston), and a Johnny Appleseed, exploring the expansionist and "civilizing" ideologies of the early US empire. Later, the one-sided love letters between two 19th-century transcendental artists (a poet and a painter) should feel familiar to anyone who has read Melville's letters to Hawthorne. The story progresses through the 20th-century and the present day, tying each of these stories to their specific context and to each other. Mason has developed a fascinating and intricately wrought romp through New England's literary past and the history that informed it.

I could see this novel pairing well with other readings in my American lit classroom!

Fantastic, brilliant, inventive, and thoroughly affecting. Set over about 400 years, in the woods of western Massachusetts, in the town that becomes Oldfield, it centers mostly on a particular house there, beginning in the French and Indian Wars, through the Revolution, late 1800s, 1945, up to about 2019, told through the lives of those who inhabit the house, the woods, build on the house, tend an apple orchard, paint the trees and mushrooms, the life events that happen there, the weather, environment, the trees, the beetles, as well as the ghosts who once dwelt there in their lives. Told in narrative, but also in letters from an English soldier to his daughters, in letters between a painter and a poet, in songs, in poems about a cougar, in a true-crime article. Truly masterful, utterly absorbing. I read it straight through in a day and it's been a long time since I have been so completely enamored by a novel. I'd say this will be a novel of 2023 and beyond, and will win quite a lot of awards.

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for an ARC.

Daniel Mason's beautiful landscape descriptions are captivating. This "historical fiction" novel should be savored, not rushed. Enjoy the journey!

4.5 stars for this one, but rounding up for sheer scope and beauty. This is an ephemeral novel; you're constantly between time periods (ranging from 400 years ago to the near future) with characters who may or may not exist in the world of the living. It takes a long time to get through and is occasionally confusing, but the recurring theme of the house in the woods and surrounding apple orchard is the thread that unites the whole. Perfect for a cottagecore rainy fall evening when you want to be transported to the woods of western Massachusetts.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this advance copy!

Well this was a lovely, if a little long, collections of stories linked through a single property. It was not the kind of book you rush through, but one you might pick up and read a little each night. I lost track of all the connections between characters and who might be real or who might be a ghost, but the setting and language and world building was exquisite.

Two reasons drove my interest in this title. First, I have read other works by the author, and loved the storylines. Second, I grew up in this area, and the ski slopes on the Massachusetts-New York border were some of my favorites, with one actually named “Catamount”. This is a sprawling delight covers the 400 years of life experienced by the people and the wooded mountains ion which they live. Over the course of time, the mountain and its people thrive or die, kill or murder. Forests are replaced by orchards, then destroyed by storms or bark beetles. The simple stone cottage of the Puritan couple becomes a yellow cottage which is expanded with each new occupant, before gradually falling into disrepair. It is a cycle of growth, decline, death and regrowth with the characters sometime leaving bits of their story behind, to be discovered in the future, and occasionally their spirit stays. Highly recommend.
Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the digital arc.

I honestly don't know what to say about this book. Some of it I really liked and other parts I found totally confusing. It starts out wirh a piece of land near a forest, an apple tree and the building of a yellow cabin in the woods.
So many stories, so many families, so many deaths,so many loves lost and hearts broken when jealousy enters the mind.
I loved all of the beauty described in the forest, what the apple tasted like with that first bite.
This yellow home abandoned, then cleaned up, abandoned and new family comes. Thw ghosts of the past mixing with tge families of the future. Dead bodies long buried, found. I did like this book to a certain extent. The writing was beautiful and confusing at the same time. This book will probably win an award, based on the writting alone. I give it a 3.5 out-of 5.

This book was absolutely stunning! I have not stopped thinking about it since starting. The premise instantly captivated me. I loved how the stories flowed and felt connected despite the varying styles and structures. I could see myself rereading this if only to enjoy the author's beautiful descriptions of the landscape.

Lots and lots of beautiful writing. Lots. And while I enjoyed the beauty of the language, very little actually moved me. I think this is in part because the narratives of individual people or creatures are ephemeral to the story of the land itself--they become, to a certain extent, meaningless. Many of the stories would have been compelling had not the slow, inexorable description of the land and plants been in the foreground. And perhaps that' s deliberate, and that this is a book that reminds us that one day humans will have been but a blip in the geologic record.

This one is a bit tricky to review because I want others to have the same experience that I had while reading, so don’t want to give anything away. The best way to go into it, I think, is blind, other than to say, it’s so much more than just a historical fiction about generations living on the same plot of land. So much more than that.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy!

"North Woods" is an incredible novel spanning nearly 400 years, centering on the intricacies of life within one New England home. It is a multi-generic, lyrical novel, which at time can make it difficult to center ones self as a reader. However, Mason manages to pull together different voices and POVs, both human and non-human, that weave together to create an enchanting story that pulled me and didn't let me go until the final page. The apple-obsessed Osgoods, the beetles in the elm, and the founding Puritan couple remain some of my favorite storylines within the novel. Yet Mason does not allow the reader to forget one single inhabitant of the home, managing to call the reader back to past inhabitants through the whisper of an object or an image.
"North Woods" is not a novel to be devoured in a day. The writing and images it presents are meant to be savored, considered, and mulled over. This novel was a breath-taking consideration of what it means to be home, and how that home might change depending on who claims it.

First there was a perfect plot of land at the edge of a forest to create a home. Then, nature had its way and the land and house morphed over four centuries to be the sometime backdrop, sometime catalyst in the lives of the diverse inhabitants. From a couple in love fleeing the constraints of Puritanical Massachusetts and an arranged marriage, to an escaped slave, to a retired soldier who found the perfect apple on the land and had to move his family to establish an orchard to twins to a painter to etc. the inhabitants share their world with nature, it’s plants, animals and secrets in the north woods.

Throughout the brilliantly written book, nature and man coexist. We watch the transience of man while nature, ever-changing, endures and sometimes suffers the abuses man inflicts on it. While the residents come and go, the author has fleshed out their characters so that you know their stories and their nexus to the house and land. The characters enhance the beauty of the narrative. You feel as though you are in the cabin with them experiencing their lives

There are spiritual and magical elements that are surprising and add another dimension to the reader’s experience. A crime reporter uncovers a mass grave. The book takes us on a journey of time showing the connections we have with each other and nature.

I agree with other reviewers that this book is prize worthy. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review

This was a very different experience. The story uses different voices representing the eras, and varies from narrative to poetry. The flora and fauna become characters across time. I very much loved the part where the young woman researcher who studied spring flowers has the opportunity to experience the recreation of bird sounds in the visually recreated forest.
The people come and go. What actually remains beyond the physical shell?
Copy provided by Net Galley

"North Woods" is a spellbinding journey through time centered on a plot of forested land in Massachusetts that begins as a refuge for a pair of lovers who've escaped their Puritan colony, and follows the many residents and visitors that eventually come to pass. Each chapter centers on a different character at a different point in time, told through various voices and mediums - sometimes first or third person, sometimes in song lyrics or poems, sometimes as speeches or a news article. Each story can be read on its own, but to think of this novel merely as an anthology of short stories doesn't do it justice.

We follow as the North Woods becomes a home for a soldier-turned-apple farmer, twin sisters who are as close in life as they are in death, a man hunting down an escaped slave from Maryland, a medium hired to investigate the spirits that haunt the house, a journalist who tries to uncover the truth behind a gruesome crime... Each one of these stories and chapters is unique and masterfully told, depicting the folly of human nature and the brevity of life. While separate, Daniel Mason throws in brief but well-meaning clues as to how these characters are connected, sometimes by blood and sometimes by pure happenstance, blurring the lines between reality and the supernatural. And while the surroundings may change, nature remains the one constant that remains to observe the passage of time and the series of events.

What makes a place a home? What if years go by, people move on, and the surroundings change? While "North Woods" may not fully answer this question, it nonetheless leaves much room for thought on the connection people have with nature and what perseveres even after we pass.

North Woods was a unique and engaging read. Fine storytelling through the land, rather than the people. Highly recommend! Only criticism is cover art, which was not reflective of book and would not have attracted me.

A new author for me. A very different style,as the main “ character” is a house and the surrounding land and what happens to it and the land over 400 years.Each chapter is almost a short story about the sequential inhabitants of the house, and I’m sure every reader will choose his / her favorite characters. They are important but the true focus of the book is nature, beautifully and almost poetically depicted in its different seasons, and the animals and insects and flora that change with each one. Nature is eternal-seasons may change, trees and flora may be ravaged but rebirth and beauty return and survive.

While I admire what the author was trying to do, in telling the story of a place, I really did not enjoy this book. I felt that all the parts did not flow together especially the verses. I can see this being the darling of readers of "literature" but I dont see it appealing to the common reader.

As I read the last pages of this book, I was overwhelmed with emotion. A sad recognition of what we humans have wrecked upon the earth, combined with a wistful hope that nature is never fully spent, never fully depleted, always ready to grab a chance at rebirth.

I had experienced the history of a place under the hands of people who loved it, a deep woods seemingly separated from the world, yet bearing the scars of civilization and environmental degradation.

It had been a haven for a couple who fled an oppressive society and the Indian captive who later sheltered there, leading to a murder which allowed an apple seed to take root. There was the man who discovers the apple tree and the apple’s miraculous experience of taste; he buys the land and propagates Osgood’s Wonder. Then, his twin daughters inherited the land and cared for it until jealousy brought more death. The woods take over, the catamount inhabiting the house, before it is discovered and claimed once again.

Generations of people come and go. One man, considered a schizophrenic, sees the ghosts of the people who came before. An amateur historian seeks evidence of a colonial murder, a young woman comes to study the flora.

Invasive species arrive and disease that claims the chestnut and beetles decimate the ash. The climate alters and Southern trees arrive, and then fire.

“Then it begins again.”

With inventive chapters that include narratives, ballads, documents and letters, following the generations who come to these woods, the story of a place is revealed as also our communal story. The runaway lovers could be our Adam and Eve, the twin sisters our Cain and Abel. We are the lovers of the land, the destroyers and murderers.

The stone house becomes a Federal home becomes a wreck becomes an improved, modern mansion, falls to neglect, becomes a commune, becomes a hunting cabin. The woods are replaced by an apple orchard and pastureland, grows wild again, is destroyed, and will be reborn.

I love this book. I loved the inventive storytelling, the passage through history, the way it broke my heart and gave me hope.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Sometimes a book touches your interior core, rearranges it, and leaves you changed. This was such a book.
The poetry of the language, the immersion into nature, the generations of gritty stories about people living in the same New England house, the juxtaposition of nature and humans, mental illness and mental health, and present and past, all helped create an awe-inspiring tale that mirrors the history of America. We meet so many memorable characters and then meet them again through gossip, students' papers, spoken stories, and even ghosts. Nature is a star, and she, too, undergoes alterations, challenges, hard times, and renewals. I highly recommend this book which still lives within me.

I have enjoyed Daniel Mason’s work before (particularly The Winter Soldier), but in North Woods, the author takes his great literary skills to a wonderful, new, and very creative, level. On the surface this is a novel of a place and the people who inhabited the place over several centuries. The place is located in western Massachusetts and consists of a house (which undergoes many renovations and changes), an apple orchard and deep, beautiful woods. The inhabitants of the place include young lovers escaping their prohibited relationship (at the time of the early European settlers to the area); a soldier (French-Indian wars) seeking peace and an escape from a diagnosis of madness, who plants the apple orchard; the twin daughters of the soldier/orchardist whose sibling love suffocates their lives (or at least the life of one of them); a married artist struggling with his homosexuality; the caretaker of the artist; the wife of the next owner of the place, who seeks a medium to rid her of her visions/madness; their grandson, who suffers from schizophrenia; and several present-day characters. These characters are beautifully created in prose written in the different styles of the times in which the respective characters lived.
Nature is itself a character in the novel, and there are tangible descriptions of the natural world and of the animals who also inhabit the location. There are tangible descriptions of insects, birds and trees – and each plays its own role in the habitation of the location. The ongoing presence of the mountain lion and the poetry related to the lion are outstandingly presented.
Woven throughout the novel is the issue of mental health – or “madness”. The reader watches as, throughout the years and (some!) community changes in attitude, many of the characters grapple with their mental health/emotional issues and needs. Mason is a professor of clinical psychology. His ability to turn his medical knowledge into the incredible artwork that is this novel is amazing.
Without giving away the incredible ending, I will just say that this novel presents the full circle of the history of a place and its inhabitants, human and animal/insect. If you want a beautiful, complex, highly creative and well-written novel, I recommend this one.