Content Warning: The novel and this guide refer to deadly acts of violence and attempted death by suicide.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1600s, a young couple flees the authorities. The woman is betrothed to a minister but doesn’t want to marry him; he’s much older and beat his last wife to death. The woman’s companion is a young man she met at church. He came from elsewhere, and the locals regard him with suspicion because he has befriended the Indigenous people and isn’t particularly religious.

After the couple elopes, they’re pursued but manage to stay ahead of the constables and their dogs. They eventually find themselves deep in the woods of western Massachusetts, many miles away from civilization. The man feels a close kinship to nature and explains how everything around them is alive: “Did he know where he was going, she asked him [...] and always he answered, Away! North they went, to the north woods” (6).

After months of travel, the man believes they’ve finally lost their pursuers. He stakes out a property line: “From his little bag, he withdrew a pouch containing seeds of squash and corn and fragments of potato” (8). The couple make this solitary place in the wilderness their home.