Written in a compilation of genres–straight narrative, letters, poetry, diary entries, medical reports, botanical photos and illustrations, and more–we are immersed in a story spanning 300+ years of a yellow house in the woods of Northern Massachusetts. Though the inhabitants (and ghosts) rarely disclose their specific time periods, the novel’s opening characters are teenage Puritans escaping the yolk of their community and find refuge in this tiny yellow cabin. And it closes in (almost?) present day. 

Along the way, we meet an apple orchardist and his twin daughters, a painter with a secret lover (those two were my favorite segments), a young woman escaping a bounty hunter, a conjurer of the dead, a mother and her schizophrenic son who sees and talks to the dead, a reporter for a True Crime magazine, and finally, a student botanist who wrecks her car and (spoiler alert) meets the apple orchardist from two centuries ago. At least I think that’s what happens.

I’m sure I missed a few characters, and I definitely had to reread the end and have since gone back to reread the beginning. This is not a seamless story, but rather a hodgepodge of mini stories (a few that end in violence) that connect through the house and the woods and their vast changes over time–sometimes rebuilding and strengthening and sometimes collapsing and decaying. There are elements of spiritualism, hauntings, perhaps magical realism, and also historical touchstones. 

Mason gives us beautiful, inventive writing and storytelling, though not an easy read.