The Red Grove

December 1, 2023

Fontaine's first novel, after the buzzy memoir The Electric Woman, is set in a protected and mysterious community, but still Luce's mother goes missing. As Luce tries to figure out what happened, she discovers far more than she expected--about Red Grove, safety, and violence. Prepub Alert.

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March 4, 2024
Fontaine’s expressive debut novel (after the memoir The Electric Woman) blends a teen girl’s coming-of-age story with a probing portrait of an intentional community for women in Northern California. Sixteen-year-old Luce Shelley has been living in the remote and woodsy commune, known as Red Grove, for the past eight years. Her mother, Gloria, brought her here with her little brother and Gloria’s twin sister, Gem, after Gem was attacked by her boyfriend, fell into a coma, and entered a vegetative state from which she has yet to emerge. Una, Red Grove’s charismatic and fanatical leader, has her eye on Luce as a potential successor, but Gloria, a psychic, is less committed to the commune than many of the others, and wants a different future for her daughter. More complications ensure when one of Gloria’s clients dies from a heart attack on the premises. After a reporter calls with questions about the commune’s suspected role in the man’s death, Gloria disappears. Luce, in trying to find her mother, discovers more about Red Grove than she bargained for. Though a melodramatic ending strains credulity, Fontaine shines with the complex story of Luce’s evolving understanding of her community and her family. This tugs at the heartstrings. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.

March 15, 2024
A sudden death unsettles a Northern California community for women. As the quarterly "reenactment of horror that led to the creation of our sanctuary" tells it, Red Grove was founded in the 19th century by Tamsen Nightingale, the survivor of a trek to California on which her sisters were killed and eaten by their starving husbands. Tamsen escaped, and when her own murderous spouse tracked her to this secluded grove of redwoods, she discovered that no woman could be harmed within its magical space. Sixteen-year-old Luce Shelley--who was brought to Red Grove at age 8 by her mother, Gloria, in 1989 after her beloved aunt Gem was beaten nearly to death by a boyfriend--believes fiercely in the place as refuge from the violent male world. Its healing atmosphere resuscitated Gem, albeit only to an "everdream" state that Gloria claims makes her a conduit to the dead loved ones, whom paying customers from nearby towns come to Red Grove to contact. As the novel opens, one of these "seekers" has a heart attack during a session and later dies in the hospital. The man's son, buying into outsiders' hostile depictions of Red Grove as a coven of witches or a lesbian commune, thinks Gloria willfully let him die and turns up menacingly at her front door; when Gloria disappears shortly thereafter, Luce suspects the son and vows to find her mother. Fontaine first paints a rich portrait of simmering tensions both between Gloria and Red Grove's leader, Una, and within Gloria's family, then launches a propulsive narrative of Luce's quest for her mother, which leads her to the real story of Red Grove's founding and the uncomfortable knowledge that violence is not exclusively employed by men. An affirmative finale shows Luce acting on her faith that Red Grove, newly based in truth, can continue to fulfill its mission as a place of peace and healing. A thoughtful coming-of-age story enfolded inside a cleverly crafted double mystery.

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May 1, 2024
No woman can be harmed in the Red Grove, deep in a redwood forest. Luce, 16, has known about the special power protecting their community ever since her mother, Gloria, took them here after Gem, Gloria's twin sister, was attacked. In a comatose state since the violent attack, Gem exists in an everdream in which she seems to communicate with the dead. So it's not alarming when a seeker visits in hopes of reaching a deceased loved one--until the man collapses. His death brings unwanted attention to the Red Grove, especially from his angry son, who thinks there's evidence of a feminist plot to get revenge on men. When Gloria disappears shortly afterward, Luce fears the worst. Her search for answers will unearth the dark secrets of the Red Grove, including the twisted truth behind their community's founding in the nineteenth century. By turns chilling and stirringly beautiful, this first novel from the author of the memoir The Electric Woman (2018) inventively imagines the freedom of women living without fear--and at what cost.

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