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The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
The Red Garden contains fourteen stories, all set in the fictional town of Blackwell, Massachusetts, and told in consecutive order taking place over three hundred years. The stories begin with Hallie Brady, who is saved from the elements by a bear and originally names the town Bearsville. The stories include the ghost of a girl who has drowned in the river, a fisherman's wife who goes door-to-door selling fish, a man so ugly that he is mistaken for a bear, and garden where only red plants will grow. Alice Hoffman's stories have received positive reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle saying, "Maybe, then, the most satisfying way to think of The Red Garden is as a book of poetry poured into a prose mold. If a reader releases any preconceived expectations about form in fiction and surrenders to the book's quietly courageous structure, Hoffman's immense grace as a storyteller will repay the reader for her faith a hundred times over."
