North Woods

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1-Interlude 2

Chapter 3-Interlude 5

Interlude 6-Chapter 7

Interlude 8-Chapter 10

Interludes 10-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

Paradise Lost

The plot line of North Woods spans nearly four centuries in the central narrative and many more in the book’s final chapter. Each character that emerges and disappears over the course of the story is intent on finding some version of paradise in the woods. Ultimately, however, they all fail. The young lovers who flee Puritan oppression see the woods as their final home and refuge, and they immediately begin to plant a garden there. However, for them and all those who follow, the paradise they seek to create is already lost. The female lover, in her later years, lives in the same cabin in the woods until encroachments from Puritan scouts threaten her idyllic existence and that of the area’s Indigenous community. Her response is to try to kill the men who bring discord to the woods, and she’s also killed in the process.

The captive girl whom the Indigenous people deposit on the elderly woman’s doorstep comes to view the cabin and her hostess as her source of refuge. However, she flees after burying the scouts and the woman, feeling that her perception of the place as an Eden is an illusion and it’s no longer safe for her or her child. Next, Charles Osgood arrives in the north woods, intending to live a peaceful life and cultivate apples. For many years he succeeds, but when the Revolutionary War breaks out, he fights and dies in the conflict.

His twin daughters maintain the illusion of tranquility in their apple-laden Eden until a snake appears in the form of various suitors for Alice’s hand. The biblical parallel shifts from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel when Mary kills Alice with an axe and buries the two of them beneath the yellow house. Esther briefly seeks refuge in the woods and in the house to escape enslavement, but she’s closely followed by a bounty hunter named Phelan. Even though the ghost of Mary intercedes to save Esther from capture, the young woman must continue her flight. Although she can’t remain in her temporary haven, she takes with her the elderly woman’s Bible containing the “Nightmaids” Letter that the captive girl scribbled in its page margins.

Teale, the landscape artist, is struck by the beauty of the north woods and seeks to capture it on canvas. His euphoria over his surroundings increases when he brings his lover, Erasmus Nash, to share the blessed spot with him. Once again, circumstances intervene to destroy his Eden, and Teale lives his last years alone. Next, Farnsworth’s dream of a hunting lodge in the woods comes to naught with the stock market crash of 1929. Morris is on the brink of discovering the elderly woman’s grave when he dies of a heart attack. Nora is about to immerse herself in the landscape to ease her depression, only to die in a car accident. The north woods beckon and offer the promise of paradise, but no living human is ever able to realize that dream. However, ghosts can travel through time and find happiness.

The Narrative Puzzle

Instead of using a more traditional structure that follows the lives of a small group of characters and details their lives in a linear way, this novel consists of character sketches of people in different eras who shuffle on and off stage quickly. As a result, the story arcs are self-contained within particular characters and eras, and though clues exist to connect these eras, no one seems able to pass on the full history of events that occurred in the north woods. The elderly woman begins telling her story to the young girl in her care, but this story is cut short by the scouts’ arrival and the deadly events that follow.

Unaware of what transpired before, Osgood builds his yellow house adjacent to the cabin and keeps the Bible but never deciphers the tiny script of the “Nightmaids” Letter. The story of the past is literally under his nose, but he never realizes it. After Mary kills Alice and then becomes ill, she conceals their bodies in the root cellar. Again, the past sits right in the midst of the present, but no one discovers the bodies until Phelan finds Esther and is presumably murdered by Mary’s ghost; only his hat remains behind. Teale finds the hat and wears it but has no notion of the bloody past associated with it.

A pair of amorous ghosts unsettle Farnsworth’s wife, thwarting his ambitions to build a hunting lodge, but he and the “medium” Anastasia don’t believe in ghosts until she starts channeling them herself and Osgood demands to know what became of his apple orchard. Only Robert seems able to connect the dots because he can see and speak to the ghosts of those who inhabited the north woods before his time. Unfortunately, his efforts to record them on film prove futile since his sister can’t see the apparitions. She sees only forest scenes in the films.

When the “Nightmaids” Letter comes to light in the mid-20th century, it briefly stirs excitement in the academic community, but circumstances prevent those who know the whole story from telling it. Professor Jorgenson and Esther’s descendent both die before they can write or publish their findings. Similarly, Morris is on the verge of connecting all the dots when he goes to dig up the elderly woman’s bones but has a fatal heart attack. Nora learns the whole story of the north woods from Charles, but not until after her fatal car accident. At an earlier point in the novel, Teale says, “Out here, no one tears down anyway—one just adds upon, agglutinates, house to house, shed to shed, like some monstrous German noun” (143). Sadly, without anyone to restore meaning, that monstrous noun remains nothing but gibberish to the living.

The Land as Silent Witness

The disjointed narrative structure and lack of character development make North Woods seem like a large puzzle in which several critical pieces are missing. At least, the characters who inhabit this landscape might perceive it that way when they reflect on its mysterious past. However, the land itself acts as a silent witness and a repository for the deeds of the past. Even without the “Nightmaids” Letter, the soil contains the skeletons of three murdered men and one murdered woman. Their bones hold the evidence of the violence they inflicted on one another. Similarly, the corpse of one of the dead scouts contains the apple seeds that later germinate into the original tree bearing the apple variety eventually known as the Osgood Wonder.

When the Osgood sisters disappear without a trace, all the neighbors are left to speculate about their fates. The land knows the sisters’ fate because it holds the corpses of Mary and Alice. When a killer comes to stalk Lillian in the yellow house, something in the woods kills him. The novel implies that this may be one of the phantom catamounts that supposedly vanished from the region a century earlier. Only the north woods know for sure.

The woods have also borne witness to the fungus that traveled overland from the coast to blight all the chestnut trees in the northeastern US. Likewise, the bark beetle that chews its way through Osgood’s favorite elm tree weakens all the elms in the woods until they eventually fall. The woods are equally aware of the predatory behavior of humans like Farnsworth. Sport hunting decimates the area’s animal population just as surely as the fungus and beetle destroy the foliage.

Ironically, the only human who is aware of the full extent of the changes affecting the woods is Robert, and no one believes him because they attribute his claims to “schizophrenic” hallucinations. As his psychiatrist notes:

The world, civilization, etc., exists in a state of constant threat of a ‘Rupture,’ which he, and only he, can repair through a series of ritualized walks. Calls these pilgrimages his ‘Stitchings,’ as if his footsteps are literally the needle that repairs the earth (217).

Despite imminent ecological disaster, the land doesn’t judge the havoc being wrought by men, insects, and fungi. It merely bears witness to the change. This nonjudgmental stance makes it the ideal receptacle for Nurse Ana’s secret. She can tell no one that she thwarted Teale’s reunion with Nash but digs a hole in the ground to whisper her guilt into it: “Inhales it, the sweet, cold smell of moss and soil. Whispers into it and feels the warmth of her breath rise back to her. Looks down to where she’ll bury it, and then presses her mouth into the hollow and begins to speak” (162). Ana does this because the earth will not judge her. It merely receives the imprint of everything that passes through it.