The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [0]
The Story Sisters Second Nature
The Third Angel Turtle Moon
Skylight Confessions Seventh Heaven
The Ice Queen At Risk
Blackbird House Illumination Night
The Probable Future Fortune’s Daughter
Blue Diary White Horses
The River King Angel Landing
Local Girls The Drowning Season
Here on Earth Property Of
Practical Magic
[For Young Adults]
Green Witch Green Angel
Incantation Indigo
The Foretelling Aquamarine
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Alice Hoffman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Some sections of The Red Garden have previously been published in Kenyon Review, Five Points, Boulevard, Southwest Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Yale Review.
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoffman, Alice.
The Red Garden / Alice Hoffman
p. cm
1. City and town life—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Massachusetts—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558O3447R43 2010
813′.54—dc22 2010006246
eISBN: 978-0-307-72083-2
Jacket design by Laura Duffy
Jacket photography © Fabio Panichi/Trigger Images
v3.1
In memory of Albert J. Guerard,
the great critic, writer, and teacher,
who in his fifty years at Harvard and Stanford universities
changed the voice of American fiction and
also changed my life
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
THE BEAR’S HOUSE
EIGHT NIGHTS OF LOVE
THE YEAR THERE WAS NO SUMMER
OWL AND MOUSE
THE RIVER AT HOME
THE TRUTH ABOUT MY MOTHER
THE PRINCIPLES OF DEVOTION
THE FISHERMAN’S WIFE
KISS AND TELL
THE MONSTER OF BLACKWELL
SIN
BLACK RABBIT
THE RED GARDEN
KING OF THE BEES
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE BEAR’S HOUSE
THE TOWN OF BLACKWELL, MASSACHUSETTS, changed its name in 1786. It had been called Bearsville when it was founded in 1750, but it quickly became apparent that a name such as that did little to encourage new settlers. True, there were nearly as many black bears in the woods then as there were pine trees, but there were also more eel in the river than there were ferns sprouting on the banks. You could stick your hand into the murky green shallows and catch half a dozen of the creatures without using bait. If you ventured in waist-high you’d be surrounded in moments. Yet no one considered calling the village Eelsville, even though people ate eel pie on a regular basis and many of the men in town wore eelskin belts and boots. They said wearing eel made them lucky at cards, but when it came to the rest of life, love for instance, or business acumen, they had no luck at all.
The town’s original name was always discussed and remembered in August, a dry yellow month when the grass was tall and bears ate their fill of blueberries on Hightop Mountain, a craggy Berkshire County landmark that separated Blackwell from the rest of the world. August was the time when the festival to commemorate Hallie Brady was held, but those who thought she’d been born in that month were mistaken. In fact, she had been born in Birmingham, England, on the sixteenth of March into unhappy circumstances. An orphan, long on her own, she’d been forced to find employment at a hatmaker’s at the age of eleven. It was an unsavory situation that included more than merely fashioning hatbands out of black ribbon. The factory owner lurked close by, running his hands over Hallie’s pale, freckled skin as though he owned her. She bided her time. She was the sort of person ready to face the wilderness, a young woman certain she had nothing more to lose. When compared to her childhood, all the hardships of the Berkshires added up to heaven, despite the deep,