Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2024
On Sale: May 14, 2024
336 pages ISBN: 0374605815 EAN: 9780374605810 Kindle: B0CGRX1YK6 Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community.
The women asked: How are they safe?
And Tamsen Nightingale said: In this red grove, no woman can be harmed. No violence may come upon her. No injury to her flesh from the flesh of another.
βThe Story of the Sisters, Welcoming Incantation
The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by the community’s founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions who stalk the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its people. Some say the mighty redwoods keep them safe.
Yet Luce’s mother, Gloria, has gone missing. A man came seeking answers among the Red Grove’s mysteriesβa connection to the beyondβand died. And then Gloria vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is devoted to its mission, its rituals and myths. But she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave her little brother, Roo, and especially their aunt Gem, whose care in that suspended state of everdream depends on Gloria in every way. But as Luce tries to figure out what has happened to her mother, she discovers that this special place is not what it seems and that protection comes at a cost.
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine's The Red Grove is an exploration of the legacies of violence, the price of safety, and the choices we make to protect what we love.
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