North Woods

One

They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, threading deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.

Fast they ran! Steam rose from the fens and meadows. Bramble tore at their clothing, shredding it to rags that hung about their shoulders. They crashed through thickets, hid in tree hollows and bear caves, rattling sticks before they slipped inside. They fled as if it were a child s game, as if they had made off with plunder. My plunder, he whispered, as he touched her lips.

They laughed with the glee of it. They could not be found! Solemn men marched past them with harquebuses cocked in their elbows, peered into the undergrowth, stuffed greasy pinches of tobacco into their pipes. The world had closed over them. Gone was England, gone the Colony. They were Nature s wards now, he told her, they had crossed into a Realm. Lying beneath him in the litter, in the low hollow of an oak, she arced her head to watch the belted boots and leather scabbards swinging across the wormy ceiling of the world. So close! she thought, biting his hand to stifle her joy. Entwined, they watched the stalking dogs and met their eyes, saw recognition cross their dog-­faces, the conspiring shiver of their tails as they continued on.

They ran. In open fields, they hid within the shadows of the bird flocks, in the rivers below the silvery ceiling of the fish. Their soles peeled from their shoes. They bound them with their rags, with bark, then lost them in the sucking fens. Barefoot they ran through the forest, and in the sheltered, sappy bowers, when they thought they were alone, he drew splinters from her feet. They were young and they could run for hours, and June had blessed them with her berries, her untended farmer s carts. They paused to eat, to sleep, to steal, to roll in the rustling meadows of goldenrod. In hidden ponds, he lifted her dripping from the water, set her on the mossy

Daniel Mason

Dazzling . . . a brave and original book, which invents its own form. It is both intimate and epic, playful and serious. To read it is to travel to the limits of what the novel can do. The Guardian (US)

A time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic . . . Each chapter germinates its own form while sending out tendrils that entwine beneath the surface of the novel . . . As [Mason] floats through thrillers, a bit of comic noir, erotic paranormal fiction and other genres, it s hard to imagine there is anything he can t do . . . The Washington Post

Gorgeous . . . a tale of ephemerality and succession, of the way time accrues in layers, like sedimentary soil. NPR

Brilliantly combines the granularity of realism with the timeless, shimmering allure of myth . . . Sui generis fiction . . . The forest and the trees: Mason keeps both in clear view in his eccentric and exhilarating novel. The New York Times Book Review

It seems almost a magic trick, the way in which Mason knits his lives into a single tale. Erica Wagner, The Sunday Times

A treatise on forest management (and mismanagement), a hallucinatory dream sequence, and an anthropologist s life s work all rolled into one. North Woods fires on all cylinders by engaging all the senses as it transports readers through history. San Francisco Chronicle

A tender lament for our vanishing earthly paradise. . . . it s hard not to come away feeling a bit wistful, seeing what we ve lost and imagining what lies ahead in our probably dystopian future. The Boston Globe

Enthralling . . . the bigger point of North Woods is how much is forgotten or never known. This resonates at a time when Americans are arguing about what version of history students should be taught. The Economist

This is . . . a cunningly contrived and beautifully intricate book . . . The Scotsman

[A] magisterial mosaic . . .