American novelist and doctor Daniel Mason is already well known for his wonderfully atmospheric historical novels The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. North Woods sees him explore innovative approaches to historical fiction, and even surpasses those earlier books. The narrative begins in the 1760s and continues through to the present day – and then moves further into some undated moment in the future. It tells the story of a “remote station of the north woods” in Massachusetts, and a lemon-yellow house with a tall black door that is built in this “hilly, snow-dusted country” which lies towards “sun’s fall”.
The story is told in fragments that capture the lives of the inhabitants of this place. They include a young couple who have fled a Puritan colony, Native Americans defending their territories and an English soldier who decides to give up “the smell of gunpowder” and devote himself entirely to apples. There are also jealous sisters, a man engaged in “Southern business” (hunting for a runaway slave) and a hunter who hires a medium to lay ghosts to rest. His attempt fails entirely because, for Mason, history is raucous and rowdy. No character in his novel is ever entirely dead. All reappear repeatedly – and their echoes are felt in the text.
