The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

She couldn’t stand the people who’d come here to the Berkshires. They were fearful and small, ready to leap into their own graves.

Hallie thought about manna, how you had to be ready to receive what you were given.

A burying ground was the true mark of an established town.

She felt the eels swimming along, ancient mysterious creatures that managed to survive the terribly cold winters in Blackwell beneath a cover of ice.

HARRY PARTRIDGE CAME to see them at suppertime. They had a fire burning, and sparks drifted into the sky. Minette’s father had brought a loaf of bread, gratefully accepted, and a pot of stew, which he alone ate. He ignored the fact that John

He had no idea that the universe could be found in a single instant, a drop of water, a blade of grass, a leaf of an apple tree.

Over the years he’d gathered a library of atlases, maps, and scientific books that were so rare, professors from Harvard College had come to view them.

had taken her eldest daughter aside to ask, “What good can ever come from a girl with so much knowledge?”

She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse. There was something that came between Emily and other people, a white linen curtain, hazy. It made the world quieter and farther away, although occasionally she could see through to the other side.

It’s called river blindness. Contracted in South America. The cause is a form of worm too tiny for the human eye to see.

Fisher cats were large weasels so powerful and fierce they were the only creatures known to kill and eat porcupines, including the quills.

Emily took only scented plants, specimens that announced themselves with their odor. Each flower would be a part of a blind man’s garden, a thicket of fragrance in which even the poorest weed might be miraculous.

The bank was vacated and people kept their money piled inside their mattresses, or buried under a stone birdbath, or in a mustard tin in the pantry.

The bees’ nests were high in the trees, which meant a hard winter would follow.

Sara had told me that a woman who could rescue herself was a woman who would never be in need.

A story can still entrance people even while the world is falling apart.

couldn’t get over the fact that his older brother, the smarter, more talented of the two, had died of typhus. Ben’s own brother, Seth, had died at the age of fourteen, from an ear infection of all things. The infection had spread and in less than twenty-four hours Seth was dead.

In all the belladonna family, only tomatoes weren’t poisonous, though the leaves could be lethal if boiled into a tea.

The only way to fight evil is with joy, Azurine had written. Forget everything we’ve ever been taught.

Kate was one of those girls who thought she knew exactly what fate would bring her, but that was all about to change.

Louise was a fixer; she didn’t throw up her hands when confronted with a problem, she took charge.