John Murray pre-empts Pulitzer Prize finalist Mason’s ‘magisterial’ novel for six figures 

John Murray executive publisher Jocasta Hamilton has pre-empted UK rights for Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason’s “magisterial and inventive” new novel North Woods in a six-figure deal. 

Rights were acquired from Victoria Hobbs at A M Heath, on behalf of Christy Fletcher at Fletcher & Co. North Woods – “a sweeping novel about the transformation of a single house in the woods of western Massachusetts told through the lives of those who inhabited it across the centuries” – will be published as a super-lead in September 2023, alongside Random House in the US.

Written over the course of a year Mason spent in New England on a Guggenheim Fellowship, North Woods is described by the publisher as a “daring, moving tale of memory and fate, a novel alive to the wonder of the changing seasons, and the deep human need to record our passage for future generations”.

The synopsis reads: “When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, their humble cabin in the woods becomes the home of an extraordinary succession of characters. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to the apples that grow there. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. 

“A crime reporter unearths a mass grave — only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realise that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.”

Hamilton said: “North Woods is inventive, clever, funny, moving, full of love (of many varieties), madness (and possible cures); a novel that swoops through time, shape-shifting and creating pathways.

“It beautifully captures the myriad ways in which we’re connected to each other and our environment, both physically and chimerically. It’s a spectacular, thrilling reading experience, a dazzling literary achievement that asks how do we live on, even after we’ve gone?”

Mason, whose novel A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (Mantle), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, said: “I am delighted to be publishing North Woods with Jocasta and the team at John Murray. Though set in America, the novel begins in a world that is very much an English one. It feels fitting that a story about a long history should find a home at a publishing house with such a deep tradition.”