The House in the Woods

The setting is the wild and remote Catskill Mountain High Peaks region known today as Platte Clove. The years are 1899-1903. At once a fascinating window on manners and mores in rural America a century ago, and an important work for Dreiser scholars-the author was a close literary friend of Theodore Dreiser ("Sister Carrie," "An American Tragedy")-this is a charming, beautifully-written memoir of the age-old quest for "the simple life. But this is a deceptive memoir, for beneath the book's placid surface are waters that ripple with betrayals, infidelities, abandonment, despair and tragedy.