The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

Author: Alice Hoffman

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Crown

(January 25, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0307393879

Book Description:

The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives.

In exquisite prose, Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions. From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives.

At the center of everyone’s life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look. Beautifully crafted, shimmering with magic, The Red Garden is as unforgettable as it is moving.

About the Author:
ALICE HOFFMAN is the acclaimed author of twenty-nine works of fiction, including The Story Sisters, The Third Angel, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The Ice Queen, Turtle Moon, Illumination Night, and Blackbird House. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and published in more than one hundred foreign editions.

My Review:

The Red Garden is not only the history of Blackwell, Massachusetts, but it's also a collection of love stories--magical, mysterious, unforgettable, consuming. It is the story of family love; passion between lovers; the loyality of beloved pets. It tells the story of a pioneer woman who loved bears; a dog who would not leave the grave of his mistress; the ghost of a little girl in a blue dress; mismatched lovers who would never let go of the past.

Chapter by chapter I was pulled into the lives of the fascinating characters who lived along the Eel River from which the first families found food, profit, and romance. Poetic and haunting, this is a page-turner. I could feel the love Ms. Hoffman poured into her beautiful novel, and couldn't stop reading until it was finished. Excellent!

(Thanks goes to Alice Hoffman for my review copy.)