Across the border from Oakfield, Massachusetts, the setting of Daniel Mason's North Woods, sits the college town of Greensbury, Vermont, where a young family arrives one summer day from California for an idyllic year in the country. There is Miles, a loveable if highly distractible scholar of Russian folktales who has been "working" on his dissertation for fourteen years; Kate, his wife, a superstar English professor whose ambition is fueled by a brush with serious illness (and managing her hapless husband); their fantasy-loving son Wesley; their artist daughter Olive; and their dog, Giuseppe, a truffle-hunting master of excavation in a land with no truffles.
Over the course of the year, as Kate introduces her students to the pleasures of Milton and Blake, Miles will make no progress on Russian folktales, but will, through what Kate calls his "capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere," gain entrée into a world with a mystery of its own, a place not only of immense natural beauty and unforgettable neighbors, but also a bizarre, even ridiculous, local legend, which - Miles begins to wonder - might not be a legend after all.