The Hazel Wood

American author Melissa Albert’s 2018 contemporary young adult fantasy novel The Hazel Wood was a New York Times best seller and was selected for the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list. In it, 17-year-old Alice Proserpine seeks her abducted mother in the Hinterland, the setting of her mysterious, reclusive grandmother’s published stories. Other work by this author includes the novel Our Crooked Hearts.

This guide follows the 2018 first edition by Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan.

Plot Summary

Alice Proserpine, 17, now lives in New York City in a luxurious apartment and attends an elite private school—but her life was very different until this year. Alice and her mother, Ella, spent Alice’s childhood and teen years living as vagrants, moving frequently, staying in the spare rooms of Ella’s acquaintances. Bad luck drove them to crisscross the country. Alice often daydreamed that her grandmother, Althea Proserpine, would invite them to come stay at her estate in upstate New York, the Hazel Wood. Althea, a recluse, wrote one published book, Tales from the Hinterland. It acquired a following of fans and became impossible to purchase anywhere. Once, when Alice was six, a redhaired man kidnapped her briefly, saying that he was taking her to see her grandmother, but Ella got Alice back safely.