by Alice Hoffman. *Starred Review* The lush and haunted wildlands of Massachusetts provide fertile ground for Hoffman's endlessly flowering imagination. Like The Probable Future (2003) and Blackbird House (2004), The Red Garden, a sequence of beguiling, linked stories, is rooted in colonial times and reaches into the present. The first foolhardy white folks the Motts, Partridges, Starrs, and Bradys to settle in this land of blackflies, bears, eels, and harsh winters in 1750 only survive because Hallie Brady, the first of a line of determined and adept women in what becomes the small town of Blackwell in Berkshire County, goes out into the snowy wilderness to find sustenance. As spring allows the founding families to cultivate the strange red soil in the village's first garden, Johnny Appleseed stays for a spell, and, later, Emily Dickinson happens by. Generation by generation, humans and animals form profound bonds; women's lives change, somewhat; men go to war; people are poor and in despair; illness and violence rage; strangers find refuge; and love blossoms impossibly, extravagantly, inevitably. In gloriously sensuous, suspenseful, mystical, tragic, and redemptive episodes, Hoffman subtly alters her language, from an almost biblical voice to increasingly nuanced and intricate prose reflecting the burgeoning social and psychological complexities her passionate and searching characters face in an ever-changing world. --Booklist
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