{ "item_title" : "North Woods", "item_author" : [" Daniel Mason "], "item_description" : "NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEARA WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR - FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARDA sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries--a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell's fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason's bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that's on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.--San Francisco Chronicle New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave--only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we're gone?", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/359/703/0593597036_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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Many are the delights and wonders of Daniel Mason’s North Woods, a novel so lush with stories and moods that it defies adequate description. The story begins when a young couple are driven from their Puritan colony—him for reputedly consorting with heathens, and her to escape marriage to a minister twice her age—to a wild, idyllic place in the north woods. Then we shift to a vivid captivity tale, in which a young mother and her child are kidnapped from their village by Native American raiders and deposited by their captors into the care of an old woman living in an ancient hut in the north woods; eventually, soldiers arrive with ideas other than rescue. Next there is a memoir by one Charles Osgood, a veteran of the French and Indian War, worrisomely obsessed with finding and propagating the perfect apple. Osgood dies fighting on the loyalist side of the American Revolution and leaves his orchards to his twin daughters, Alice and Mary. Divided by jealousy and bound by love and guilt, they bring destruction to the orchards and his flocks. Later a slave hunter stalks an escapee on her way to Canada. A 19th-century painter writes revelatory letters to his beloved and famous novelist friend. The sensual, alluring charlatan Madame Rossi arrives to conduct a seance. Included amid these stories are verses, riddles, ballads and even an erotic tale of the elm bark beetle. The inhabitants, owners, visitors, ghosts and the very forest itself transform over time. On it goes, in love and madness, to the present day. North Woods is a love poem to the human and natural history of Western Massachusetts. One of the novel’s enticements is the exuberant descriptions of evolving nature. Another is discerning the relationships among the succession of occupants here in the north woods. Most brilliant of all is the novel’s daring storytelling, through which its tales come spectacularly to life. They are wise, profound, chilling, carnal and funny. North Woods is an amazing and deeply pleasurable tour de force.