North Woods

Pulitzer Prize finalist and physician Mason (A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth) offers a luminous novel in the form of loosely connected stories centered on a home in western Massachusetts. It begins as a young couple runs away from their harsh Puritan community, finding refuge in the North Woods, where they build and live in the storied house. So begins a rotating door of personalities and characters—a pining landscape painter, a zealous apple cultivator, a man who sees ghosts, a fake medium who summons real spirits—each of whom is tied, even if tangentially, to the same place. This lushly written and often humorous novel explores the cycles of life and death and the interconnectedness of past and present. Both nature and the house are constant presences, though the house undergoes substantial alterations. The audio production’s multiple voice actors capture the changing characters and time periods, stitching them into a beautiful tapestry.