The Red Garden

Alice Hoffman wrote The Red Garden, a novel based on a series of loosely connected stories centered in Blackwell, Massachusetts.  The stories start in the 1600's and end in the late 1900's.  The same house and garden are mentioned in many of the chapters.  Other common themes are the color red, eels in the Eel River, apples, bears and love (or lack of love).  I thought this was a very creative way to tell a story. I can only imagine some of the drama that has happened on the property where I live.  I doubt stories can go back as far as the 1600's but still, truth is often stranger than fiction and I am sure a lot of life has been lived here.  I like Hoffman's style as a writer.  True, she does mix in a little bit of magic which is not my favorite theme but she doesn't over power us with the magical stuff.  She writes clean and succinct lines that leaves us to our own imaginations.  The people she writes about seem real and complicated.  None of them are all good or all bad.  The one thing the Hoffman characters have in common is that they are fascinating.