The Red Garden (Alice Hoffman)

This quiet, moving novel is a set of linked stories set in Blackwell, MA, starting with its founding in 1750 to the present day. Each story is a focused portrait of someone in the town, and they are linked in many ways: through the first house built in the town, through bears and dogs, through eels and Eel Creek, through drowned children and runaways, and through an old garden where the dirt is the color of blood and, no matter what you plant, it comes up red. I thoroughly enjoyed it, coming to know these people and this place deeply.