Stories of secrets, passions and loyalties connect us, their threads running through time to link the past with the present. Alice Hoffman's novel, The Red Garden, uses these very stories to connect people in Blackwell, Massachusetts, with their past. The immigrant starting a new life, the civil war soldier saved by a neighbor and a stranger wandering into town...their stories are both familiar and new. Each story intertwines in Blackwell, spinning a web connected by a garden where only red things grow.