The Red Grove

A Novel

By: Tessa Fontaine

Narrated by: Erin Moon

Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community.

What kind of world might we have, who might we become, if everyone were truly safe? What price would we pay for that kind of freedom?

There are secrets beneath every community—even those founded with the purest of intentions—secrets as strong and reaching as the roots that keep us connected to one another and anchored to home.

The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by its founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions stalking the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its boundaries. Some say the mighty redwoods keep its people safe.

Yet a man has died on the Red Grove’s sacred ground. And Luce’s mother, Gloria, has vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is utterly devoted to its mission, its rituals and history. Still, she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave Luce’s little brother, Roo, and their aunt, Gem, whose life and care in a suspended state they call everdream depend on Gloria in every way. But strange things begin to happen as Luce tries to figure out where her mother has gone. Clicks echo out from the trees, flies pound against the windows, and a strange man keeps calling on the phone. The deeper Luce digs, the more she must ask if her beloved home, the women she admires, and the stories they tell might be built on a devastating lie.

The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine’s The Red Grove is a story about mothers, daughters, and sisters, about the dangers of being a woman in this world, and about the flawed, fierce choices we make to protect what we love.

©2024 Tessa Fontaine (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“An eerie and beautiful exploration of the violence between men and women and the true nature of magic, The Red Grove is a shimmering, hidden world, and Tessa Fontaine is ferocious in every line. Intoxicating and impossible to put down.”—Rufi Thorpe, author of The Knockout Queen

“This gorgeous, frightening novel maps the hidden roots—as intricately woven as those beneath the ancient redwood forest of its setting—that link mother to daughter, and sibling to sibling, and utopia to fear. The Red Grove is a strange and wondrous flowering, equal parts gripping mystery, moving coming-of-age story, and brilliant exploration of the self-definition of a community founded on an impossible promise. Tessa Fontaine has given us a deft and enrapturing novel full of underground secrets, ready to spring.”—Claire Beams, author of The Illness Lesson