One Drink Book Club | North Woods by Daniel Mason

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of the One Drink Book Club. Today we'll be discussing

[00:00:13] Northwoods by Daniel Mason. Northwoods is a novel that follows the stories of successive

[00:00:18] owners of a house and property in western Massachusetts over the span of 300 years. Joining me to

[00:00:24] talk about this New York Times bestseller is Billy Jones, a friend of mine that I know

[00:00:28] from college and I've known for almost 35 years. And he is joining from the west coast.

[00:00:34] Thanks for being here Billy.

[00:00:35] Billy Jones Thanks, Jamey. Happy to be here. I love talking

[00:00:39] books. I love talking to you.

[00:00:40] Jamey Bowers Well, that's a perfect combination. Since

[00:00:42] it is the One Drink Book Club, we'll start it off with asking you what cocktail did

[00:00:47] you bring tonight?

[00:00:48] Billy Jones I have a little cocktail. The book has a lot of references to apples

[00:00:53] in it. So I was looking for something not apple-tiny but something very similar. So

[00:00:59] this is called Amore Dew. It's Tullamore Irish Whiskey with some apple juice and a little

[00:01:06] lemon on top. And the book is very anti-sider. So I almost went cider. But I respect the

[00:01:13] author.

[00:01:14] Jamey Bowers I had the same thing with it. I was looking through these different

[00:01:17] recipes. I would just like, oh, cider out, cider out. There is definitely a part

[00:01:22] of the book where cider is very frowned upon. So I also took the apple route and I made a

[00:01:29] Jack Rose, which I have never had before. And a Jack Rose is an ounce and a half of apple

[00:01:36] jack, Laird's Apple Jack, and then basically half a lemon and then half an ounce of

[00:01:43] grenadine. So that's what it gives it, that kind of rosy color. And it's kind

[00:01:47] of interesting. You shake that up with ice, you strain it and the Apple Jack, the

[00:01:53] Laird's Apple Jack, I did a little research on that. They started making apple jack in

[00:01:59] 1698. So it's one of the first distilled spirits in the US. And actually George

[00:02:06] Washington tasted it. They started it in New Jersey. George Washington tasted it

[00:02:10] and wrote them for the recipe, which they gave it, which was clearly they didn't have

[00:02:14] the patent lawyers that they have today. And he made his own version of it from their

[00:02:20] recipe and introduced Virginia to the Apple brandy in the late 1700s. So kind of

[00:02:28] interesting. And then Jack Rose kind of came to prominence during the prohibition

[00:02:32] era and was the favorite drink of John Steinbeck, the author. And then also

[00:02:39] appears in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. So I figured it was

[00:02:44] steeped in literary history. Well, very literary cheers to you. It's tasty. And

[00:02:50] it forced me to talk to my neighbors and get some apple juice because I don't have

[00:02:53] any young ones in the house anymore. So I found some with some toddlers up the

[00:02:57] block in the bar to couple of juice boxes and it was perfect. Excellent. Excellent.

[00:03:02] So how did you like the book? I really enjoyed the book. I'm in a book club

[00:03:07] and we have suggestions every month. And this was one that came I Lee

[00:03:11] suggested. My wife had read it previously. I make a very concerned effort to not

[00:03:16] know a lot about what I'm reading beforehand. I try not to read the book

[00:03:20] jacket. I don't want a lot of other people's context before I get into it

[00:03:25] so that I can really experience it clean. And it was thoroughly enjoyable from

[00:03:32] perspective of a story that was more about a place than about any of the

[00:03:35] people, although all the characters are pretty great. Like I loved the fact

[00:03:39] that through line of the book was this place, this geographical place. And it

[00:03:44] was really interesting for me to see how that could carry through the eons of

[00:03:50] the book. Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting the way the

[00:03:54] author used different devices to tell each story, too. You know, some of them

[00:03:58] were told through letters. Some of them were narrated by a third party.

[00:04:04] Some of them were narrated by the participants. And so I thought that

[00:04:09] that kind of gave you this interesting perspective and it was very distinct in

[00:04:14] between those stories. But the common line was this house, was this land and

[00:04:19] the surrounding woods. And I had gotten it as a suggestion from my son who

[00:04:24] doesn't read a lot of fiction actually. So and he enjoyed it. And I thought,

[00:04:28] well, if you like it, you don't usually like a lot of fiction. You

[00:04:31] like nonfiction. So I thoroughly enjoyed the different voices and not

[00:04:38] just the voices of who was telling the story, but the language that evolved.

[00:04:43] The book starts long ago when there are first English speaking settlers, the

[00:04:48] first human people in the book. And they're speaking in a dialect that's

[00:04:54] understandable, but very different. And they're writing it in a different

[00:04:56] dialect. And then it evolves through time. The American English language

[00:05:01] evolves with it and it becomes colonial and then industrial revolution and

[00:05:06] modern. And it just really, I thought the author did a really nice job of

[00:05:11] kind of keeping us with the different characters and the different

[00:05:15] narrators. Easy to follow, but definitely placing you in a period of time.

[00:05:20] Yeah. And I thought he did a nice job too of explaining how the land

[00:05:24] changed. And you would think in a lot of stories like this, if you were

[00:05:28] thinking this house, it would be development around the house and kind

[00:05:33] of the highway came through things like that. And that didn't really

[00:05:36] happen here. The changes were, you know, you built an orchard.

[00:05:40] And so you had to clear the land and graft the trees and create

[00:05:45] this orchard. But then in another period, it goes through how the

[00:05:49] chestnuts died off in, you know, eastern United States or how

[00:05:54] the elms died off because of a certain blight. And so it talked a lot about

[00:05:59] how the land and the animals, that the catamount comes over and over again,

[00:06:03] which is kind of a mountain lion, panther of the east that essentially

[00:06:08] became extinct over time. But he explains how this land changes.

[00:06:15] And it's not the normal changing of the land that you would hear about

[00:06:18] like, oh, well, this used to be a farm and before that it was forest.

[00:06:22] And now it's a sub development with, you know, buns of houses.

[00:06:26] I thoroughly was mesmerized by the magical nature of the land.

[00:06:30] And I know we can talk about this in many different ways, but bring it up right away.

[00:06:34] It's the land is such a character that the place it's difficult to get to

[00:06:39] from the beginning. From the first time we approach it, it's through

[00:06:44] seven days of running through the wilderness. And then as modern people

[00:06:48] come in, you have to get the trees, take your hats off as you're trying to get there.

[00:06:52] And then not really sure what the pathway is and society and industrialization

[00:06:57] of America occurs around it.

[00:06:59] And I'm familiar enough with New England and Northern New York to know that

[00:07:04] it's still pretty rustic. There are some some forests up there and stuff.

[00:07:07] But you're not more than an hour to car ride from anything on the Eastern

[00:07:11] Seaboard right there. Yet it's still isolated enough that it's a

[00:07:16] difficult place to kind of not just understand, but to just get to.

[00:07:21] You know, it really tells you that the land is going to be the thing.

[00:07:24] And that mystical nature of the land really intrigued me all the way through

[00:07:28] and was part of every story all the way through.

[00:07:32] Well, and your comment that is hard to get to was also an interesting thing.

[00:07:37] Most of the characters who show up on this land and on this property

[00:07:42] are coming from a city or going from somewhere else.

[00:07:46] And they want to escape kind of normal hustle and bustle.

[00:07:49] Even the first two people who are these Puritans leave their village

[00:07:54] in the restraints of the church and society that they were part of

[00:07:59] to kind of be out in the woods and be wild and free.

[00:08:02] But then later in the characters, even in modern age,

[00:08:06] people are getting away from Boston, they're getting away from the city

[00:08:09] and they're trying to get back to nature, so to speak.

[00:08:13] And I really enjoyed how even though it got more modern and cars became a thing

[00:08:17] and trains became a thing and ease of transport, it wasn't easy.

[00:08:21] Still wasn't easy, even though it was just a couple hours drive from Philadelphia

[00:08:25] or wherever the doctors were coming from at that one story.

[00:08:28] It just it was always a little more difficult than you thought

[00:08:31] and difficult to leave as well.

[00:08:33] So it just added to that remove from society,

[00:08:38] remove from the trappings of the world.

[00:08:40] And and I had a hard time placing things on the land

[00:08:46] throughout the book, but I didn't have a hard time knowing where it was.

[00:08:49] And those seem like very opposing ideas,

[00:08:51] but I really felt comfortable in every one of the instances with what was happening where

[00:08:56] when I couldn't ever really get an image in my head of how the

[00:08:59] house was situated on the land with the orchard and the forest behind it.

[00:09:03] And it didn't bother me because every time

[00:09:05] it was a slightly different challenge for the people who were there.

[00:09:09] You know, it's interesting you say that because I had some of the same experience.

[00:09:12] And when we set the date for this, I had finished it

[00:09:17] this past weekend and today is Wednesday.

[00:09:20] And so I had a few days and I didn't feel like starting another book.

[00:09:23] So I kind of went back and started again with North Woods.

[00:09:27] And I found that at the second reading,

[00:09:31] I had a better sense of, oh, OK, there's this waterfall.

[00:09:35] There's a path. There's a pasture. There's a, you know, these woods.

[00:09:38] And I was able to follow it.

[00:09:40] And I realized that the author

[00:09:43] had many of the characters visit some of the same landmarks on the land,

[00:09:48] whether it was the waterfall or the clearing.

[00:09:52] But I hadn't really caught that in the first reading.

[00:09:55] So some of that became a little clearer on the second reading.

[00:09:58] And I don't did you listen to the book or did you read?

[00:10:01] I read the book.

[00:10:02] I like a tactile experience of turning the pages.

[00:10:05] And this book, I sent you an attachment, but this book has a lot of illustrations in it.

[00:10:09] And several of the characters in the stories are artists.

[00:10:14] And they are, you know, taxidermists or painters or writers or whatever they are.

[00:10:19] So there's so many illustrations that went along with each of the little stories

[00:10:24] that it was a really nice addition to just the words on the page.

[00:10:28] Not all of them were super pertinent to me,

[00:10:31] but a lot of them kind of helped me through like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:10:34] All right, I see that the style of art that the painter is doing

[00:10:37] and why that's so important.

[00:10:39] And the words did it justice, but seeing that one illustration

[00:10:43] really kind of helped me through those things.

[00:10:45] I was really happy when you sent those to me because I listened to it

[00:10:48] and I didn't get those.

[00:10:50] And so when you when I was flipping through that file, I thought,

[00:10:53] oh, this is really cool.

[00:10:55] And it was nice to see the references.

[00:10:57] It wasn't like you had pictures of the characters themselves,

[00:11:00] but it was pictures of similar people in similar times.

[00:11:04] So you kind of saw the clothing you saw, the environment.

[00:11:08] There's one section also I talked in my book club where split between listeners

[00:11:12] and readers, and there's one section in it where an entire chapter is a footnote

[00:11:17] and and the way that it's laid out.

[00:11:20] I'm just going to hold it up for the reader.

[00:11:23] It's laid out as a footnote and really, really small.

[00:11:26] Oh, that's funny.

[00:11:27] The whole way through.

[00:11:28] So it's just it read in a different way.

[00:11:31] And some of the people in the book club we just met on Monday night,

[00:11:35] it's Wednesday, really clicked for them.

[00:11:38] They're like, oh, oh, that makes sense now.

[00:11:40] Now I understand it was so minutiae and the detail and the academic part of it.

[00:11:45] That was really a neat thing.

[00:11:46] So I think that that was another one of the devices that really made it

[00:11:50] a fun read for me.

[00:11:52] Yeah, that sounds like a neat.

[00:11:54] Was it one of the ones where they were explaining like the seeds

[00:11:57] and how the seeds traveled from England to OK, yeah.

[00:12:01] Yeah, that makes a lot more sense because there's a lot of stuff that you're like,

[00:12:04] why am I reading this narrative of a seed from someone's foot on a boat

[00:12:10] and the thing that gets washed here?

[00:12:11] But if you read it as a footnote, it totally made sense to us.

[00:12:15] And so it was a it was a nice moment where we're all sitting around the table

[00:12:18] and people are I get that now.

[00:12:20] Oh, OK, that makes sense.

[00:12:22] I thought it was a great read.

[00:12:23] Not everybody in my book club loved it.

[00:12:25] A couple of people really did.

[00:12:26] Oh, interesting.

[00:12:27] And they were having a hard time with the lack of it's a historical fiction piece.

[00:12:33] But it's not really about the history.

[00:12:37] Right, right, which is really a nice thing.

[00:12:40] Historical references.

[00:12:42] But it wasn't really about a war or any particular period of time.

[00:12:47] You didn't glean a whole lot about any of those periods,

[00:12:51] maybe a little bit about like the Seance period or the Revolutionary War,

[00:12:56] which was kind of interesting.

[00:12:58] Charles Osgood, who is one of the characters who starts the orchard,

[00:13:02] ends up being a Tory.

[00:13:04] He does fight on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War,

[00:13:07] which is kind of an interesting twist.

[00:13:09] You don't you don't see that in books very often.

[00:13:11] Usually everyone is fighting for the good side.

[00:13:15] Right. And and so that was kind of interesting.

[00:13:18] But you don't really glean a whole lot from that.

[00:13:21] And it doesn't in the story doesn't suffer for it.

[00:13:24] It really does take you through these periods of time

[00:13:28] and periods of the development of the American story

[00:13:32] without having to dwell on too much of it.

[00:13:34] Now, there's a whole section about chasing escaped slaves,

[00:13:39] which again, I didn't expect to come in a New England,

[00:13:42] Northern New York, Massachusetts story like it just feels like, oh, OK.

[00:13:48] And it wasn't too steeped in the history of the movement,

[00:13:52] but it was there enough for you to really kind of carry it

[00:13:55] to its logical conclusion. That was really good.

[00:13:58] Yeah, I thought that was an interesting transition almost

[00:14:02] because it wasn't really a deep character.

[00:14:04] Some of the characters you got to know a lot better than than others.

[00:14:07] And that one was kind of a brief little interlude,

[00:14:09] but an interesting one nonetheless.

[00:14:12] The the other character, I mean, if you say that the property

[00:14:15] in the land was a character, the house was also a character

[00:14:18] and nothing was ever demolished.

[00:14:22] Everything was built on and there's a great line in it

[00:14:25] by one of the characters who lives there,

[00:14:28] who is the painter in the mid 18th century.

[00:14:32] And he says everyone here in New England and these in these woods,

[00:14:36] the houses, they are glutenate like a German mound

[00:14:40] where they just add on and add on.

[00:14:41] I thought that was such a great line.

[00:14:43] It was fun. That's a great line.

[00:14:45] Yeah. And there were lines like that from periods of time

[00:14:48] that we visited in the vernacular of those characters,

[00:14:52] which really was nice.

[00:14:53] There were a bunch of little cliches

[00:14:55] that made sense pre-revolutionary war, pre-Civil War,

[00:14:59] late 1800s industrial revolution, modern times like it.

[00:15:03] They're just the author did a really good job of kind of

[00:15:07] keeping with the time period of that part of the story,

[00:15:10] which I really was thankful for.

[00:15:13] Yeah. When you listen on Audible,

[00:15:15] you have this ability to hit bookmark on certain things

[00:15:18] that will give you like a 30 second clip.

[00:15:21] And I was very encouraged because I think it was that a glutenate line

[00:15:25] that I had tagged.

[00:15:27] And then I read the New York Times review of the book

[00:15:30] and they had they included that in there as well.

[00:15:34] We have a moderator for our book club

[00:15:35] and he's a writer and English professor and he is that that same quote.

[00:15:40] So that's that that a glutenate spoke to everybody

[00:15:43] and it was really that was really a good one.

[00:15:45] So I just I think that for a fan of historical fiction

[00:15:49] and even historical nonfiction, like I am to be able to kind of touch

[00:15:53] in all these places but not get too deep in it is leaves you wanting more,

[00:15:57] which a good novel really should do.

[00:15:58] And the fact that almost every story I wanted a little more

[00:16:02] just a lot more, but I was happy to move to the next story

[00:16:04] and happy to move on.

[00:16:06] Now, was there a character or a period in these sections

[00:16:11] that was more memorable to you than others or one that you really enjoyed?

[00:16:15] What was your favorite?

[00:16:17] I think my favorite was the adult life of the twin sisters.

[00:16:22] I think that was really interesting to me just because I am these girls

[00:16:27] are not born on the farm.

[00:16:28] They're the daughters of Charles Osgood who we talked about

[00:16:31] and they are brought up from before 10 on this farm.

[00:16:37] Kind of hard to get to remote from the rest of the world together

[00:16:40] with nobody but each other until they die in their 70s or 80s or like late in life.

[00:16:46] And there's a huge chunk, one of the more developed parts of the book

[00:16:49] is how it talks about their relationship with each other,

[00:16:53] how they depend on each other, what they were willing to do.

[00:16:57] One of them is slightly prettier than the other, even though they're identical.

[00:17:01] But it's just kind of understood.

[00:17:02] I really like that those passages in the book

[00:17:05] because it really told the full story of these two.

[00:17:08] And then they end up sticking around spoiler alert.

[00:17:11] They end up being a part of the rest of the book.

[00:17:13] You know, they're there. Yeah, it was really great.

[00:17:16] I think they were definitely the most dramatic.

[00:17:18] Yeah. If you were to remember any character,

[00:17:21] I think you'd probably remember the twins, Mary and Alice for sure.

[00:17:24] And it's in its hippie does a good job of painting a picture

[00:17:27] of these two cute little girls pre-revolutionary war growing up here

[00:17:32] and then through their lives to being hearty women working this farm

[00:17:37] known everywhere for their strength and their fortitude

[00:17:40] and still being desirable later in life.

[00:17:42] It was really, really a nice passage for me.

[00:17:45] How about you? Did you have a favorite character?

[00:17:47] So I would definitely put the twins as the most memorable.

[00:17:51] The one that I kind of felt fondly for was Morris,

[00:17:55] the amateur historian who is later in the book.

[00:18:00] It's probably what the fifties, I think, when he is around

[00:18:04] and he is a widower and is part of this historical society

[00:18:10] and he basically discovers some of the history of this particular land.

[00:18:14] And he feels like he's on the cusp of this real big discovery.

[00:18:18] And he he laments that amateur historians are just never given

[00:18:23] the kind of respect that they might deserve.

[00:18:26] And he had been kicked out of his historical society

[00:18:29] because he had he had dated three of the members

[00:18:33] and I think overlapping some of those three.

[00:18:35] And so it was kind of the scandal.

[00:18:37] And I thought he was funny.

[00:18:39] And he was great because he also he is the device that reveals it all to us.

[00:18:46] But as the reader, again, spoiler alert, if you haven't heard the book yet,

[00:18:49] maybe don't listen to this part, but we are the only ones

[00:18:52] that get to see his finished research

[00:18:56] and that he's right about so many things

[00:18:58] and nobody else gets to learn about this but us.

[00:19:01] And and he's put it all together and he is.

[00:19:03] He's a joke, but he's a great joke and he's amateur historians.

[00:19:07] And this is why you can picture him so well.

[00:19:10] I really like that character too. Yeah, it's good.

[00:19:12] The one thing I probably had a problem with was there's a certain amount

[00:19:15] of supernatural activity that goes on.

[00:19:17] Some of these people come back as ghosts and then some people disappear.

[00:19:23] The slave hunter character who is looking for the scape slave.

[00:19:27] He disappears.

[00:19:28] I'm not going to go into details,

[00:19:30] but you're not quite sure if he disappears because of a ghost

[00:19:33] or something else or how did that happen?

[00:19:35] And so some of that was a little weird.

[00:19:39] I enjoyed it, but it was also hard to tell what was real and what was perception.

[00:19:45] And that's a nice thing that I like when authors do is to who do you trust?

[00:19:49] What's the voice you're trusting?

[00:19:51] And am I trusting that these people are there or are they ghosts?

[00:19:56] And if they're ghosts, can I trust them?

[00:19:58] Can I trust their retelling of the activities of the humans?

[00:20:01] And as it goes further on, you're forced to think back and wait,

[00:20:07] were all those characters alive or were some of those characters actually ghosts?

[00:20:12] So one of the ones we talked about there is a little boy who leads

[00:20:16] the colonel or captain whenever he is when he finds the land for the first

[00:20:19] time leads him into the clearing where this house is.

[00:20:22] Was that a little boy?

[00:20:24] Was that a ghost?

[00:20:27] Because when that little boy reappears later in the story,

[00:20:31] he's not really a trustworthy character.

[00:20:32] So when he says I was that little boy, you're like, where are you?

[00:20:36] I don't know about that.

[00:20:37] So it was a nice way to really play with the idea of who do you trust,

[00:20:41] which narrator is trustworthy?

[00:20:42] Who's the true voice here?

[00:20:44] And to me, it takes us back to the only true thing to trust is the land.

[00:20:49] Yeah.

[00:20:50] And the trees.

[00:20:51] The and also with that, just to make it more complex,

[00:20:55] one of the characters who comes in later in the 19th century or in the 20th century

[00:21:02] is a man who's suffering from schizophrenia and has, you know, visions.

[00:21:07] But you find out later some of his visions are these ghosts that really did exist

[00:21:11] or ghosts of people who really did exist.

[00:21:14] And so how much of it was mental confusion?

[00:21:18] Or was he actually somehow seeing things that other people just couldn't see?

[00:21:23] And an interesting thing about that entire storyline that I didn't learn until this week

[00:21:27] was that the author is a psychiatrist.

[00:21:30] Authors are practicing psychiatrists at Stanford and got his MD before he wrote any books.

[00:21:36] And, you know, just like, well, wait a minute, what does he say?

[00:21:39] Where do we go when you look at it through that lens?

[00:21:41] It's like, OK, there's a lot happening here.

[00:21:44] And in the historical time period where the schizophrenic is treated by some

[00:21:49] elect or shock therapy and some new treatments that can be taken.

[00:21:52] How much of that is the psychiatrist talking about his beliefs as a psychiatrist

[00:21:57] versus a storytelling device?

[00:21:59] And it was really, really neat.

[00:22:01] I love to hear about authors, what they did before they wrote

[00:22:06] and how that affects what they did.

[00:22:08] And clearly there are some chapters in here that are directly pulled from

[00:22:12] his profession, his learning and his experiences, which were neat.

[00:22:17] So he there's a couple of neat things I found out researching him.

[00:22:20] He in the pandemic went to a rural New York house with his family

[00:22:25] and lived there while he wrote this book.

[00:22:27] And he wrote about the stuff that he was experiencing and what was going on.

[00:22:31] And then he kind of made it up as he went along.

[00:22:35] This was not a book he outlined.

[00:22:37] So he really did take the inspiration from what was around him.

[00:22:40] And I thought that was that was fascinating.

[00:22:42] That was cool.

[00:22:43] You know, my daughter has a one of her hobbies

[00:22:46] and habits, especially if we're traveling is she will see, you know,

[00:22:51] a couple sitting at a table and she will then start filling in

[00:22:54] exactly where they are in life.

[00:22:56] And this is the fourth date and they've done this and and they're here,

[00:23:00] but they disagree about, you know, he doesn't like Asian food,

[00:23:03] but he's trying to go along with it.

[00:23:05] And she kind of tells these stories and they're they're very entertaining.

[00:23:09] And it was fun to hear that he was kind of doing the same thing.

[00:23:12] OK. Yeah. What do you think happened in this house?

[00:23:14] Well, maybe that, you know, mounted head of that owl,

[00:23:19] you know, that was shot by this guy who wanted to be a hunting lodge.

[00:23:24] You did this or whatever.

[00:23:26] So it made me start to question a lot of things that the seans,

[00:23:30] super naturalists, that section was like, oh, wait, did he go to something?

[00:23:35] Is there something cool?

[00:23:36] Like it just was really it was a fun.

[00:23:38] It was a fun lens to look back through the book at.

[00:23:41] Yeah. So yeah, it's cool.

[00:23:43] Yeah. That section had another line where then the character there,

[00:23:47] the man of the house at the time wanted to turn this property into a hunting lodge.

[00:23:53] And so he had all this taxidermy over the walls

[00:23:56] and he kept referring to his wife as, you know, my little marmots,

[00:24:00] my little, you know, otter, all these animals.

[00:24:04] And I think there was a line

[00:24:07] where the supernaturalist, the medium said, well,

[00:24:10] despite his terms of endearment, several which were mounted on the wall.

[00:24:14] I thought that was a fun line that he kept referring to women

[00:24:18] in these terms of shot the animals that he has hunted.

[00:24:23] Well, and I love that same guy.

[00:24:24] I was like, well, I know a guy who knows the president

[00:24:27] and he could get him up here and we're set.

[00:24:30] Like I know a guy who knows a guy.

[00:24:31] It's like, come on, Mr.

[00:24:33] The bluster of it.

[00:24:34] And I do think that a lot of the people who end up in this location

[00:24:38] end up struggling to figure it out and end up trying to struggle with

[00:24:42] where they're going in life, what they're doing.

[00:24:44] And you start at the beginning with a couple who run away from the Puritan village

[00:24:48] and then there's some other stories that come through there.

[00:24:52] But when when the apple farmer comes in,

[00:24:55] he's perceived as crazy before he gets there.

[00:24:58] And then his idea after he's found is perceived as totally wack.

[00:25:01] And then he gets there in his calm

[00:25:03] and for his the rest of his life, living life is like before

[00:25:07] before he becomes a ghost, which he becomes a ghost to tell you that

[00:25:10] he seems the happiest of anybody.

[00:25:12] You know, that is totally true because most of the characters are not all that happy.

[00:25:17] They're all longing for something they don't have.

[00:25:19] And most of them came to this property

[00:25:22] trying to find something that didn't exist in their lives.

[00:25:26] And the property is not necessarily fulfilling it.

[00:25:29] But Charles Osgood, the originator of the orchard,

[00:25:33] was the only one who set a very clear vision.

[00:25:36] I want to find the best tasting apple in the northeast.

[00:25:41] And then I'm going to make an orchard out of that apple.

[00:25:43] And he was the one with a real plan,

[00:25:46] whereas everybody else kind of fell into the existence there.

[00:25:51] And he left the orchard to go fight another war

[00:25:56] and had he just stayed probably but it lives to much better life.

[00:26:00] It was really interesting, the biblical references throughout the book

[00:26:04] that were just kind of sprinkled in.

[00:26:05] And it's hard to say that, you know, seven days of Adam and Eve running,

[00:26:10] you know, like it starts with that and then there's the apple

[00:26:13] and he stabbed in the heart and there's the Cain and Abel or Mary and Alice

[00:26:17] and all the different things in trials and tribulations as I go through.

[00:26:21] And it just what the author said is it thinks the biblical

[00:26:25] references are inescapable.

[00:26:28] It's impossible to write about a couple who find themselves

[00:26:30] in a state of nature without having the story of Genesis looming over you.

[00:26:33] And he just is open about, yeah, a couple,

[00:26:36] the man a little more than the woman leading them to this paradise,

[00:26:39] this beautiful place and going off to start it all.

[00:26:42] It's hard to get away from that Adam and Eve motif.

[00:26:46] Oh, sure. Yeah.

[00:26:47] And especially there's a decent number of murders

[00:26:51] that occur in this history of this house.

[00:26:55] And so I think there's kind of original sin

[00:26:58] and kind of trying to get what you shouldn't have and all that.

[00:27:03] It's steeped in that.

[00:27:05] Definitely.

[00:27:05] And I enjoyed the biological learning of the bugs.

[00:27:12] There's a lot of discussion of how this bug

[00:27:15] brought this disease that wiped out this just not for us.

[00:27:18] And then this, you know, it's interesting.

[00:27:20] Yeah, really made a lot of sense once you get there and like, oh,

[00:27:23] I get it now. Yeah.

[00:27:24] Yeah. And at the end, again, not to give anything away,

[00:27:28] there's kind of a, I think, a nice closure to the story.

[00:27:32] I mean, because clearly you could kind of go on forever,

[00:27:35] but it ends in kind of present day.

[00:27:39] Yeah.

[00:27:40] And a couple, I was talking about this with some of my friends in the book club

[00:27:43] read it differently that the world ended and then

[00:27:46] nature took back over and it goes back through it.

[00:27:49] But it's a different nature.

[00:27:50] And one of the references that people were talking about is when they brought sheep

[00:27:54] in and they had to have sheep in this field and they, you know,

[00:27:57] converted a pasture to a sheep pasture.

[00:28:00] There's a quote when the sheep are gone, not going to revert to the normal field.

[00:28:03] It's going to be a rough different like all this stuff that's come through

[00:28:06] their feed and through their poop and comes up and it's just a different thing

[00:28:10] altogether. The one constant for me was the tree that was in front of the

[00:28:13] house. Yeah, grew up in big.

[00:28:15] That was the big Elm was lovely.

[00:28:17] And you kept waiting for it because you knew you hear early on like, oh,

[00:28:21] there's going to be, there's some foreshadowing what's coming with the tree.

[00:28:24] And it does it.

[00:28:24] It lives up to all the hope that you want it to all the gruesome horrible

[00:28:28] hope that comes out of it.

[00:28:29] But it's the one, the life of this one tree that comes up and overshadows

[00:28:34] the entire house and expanded house and expanded house.

[00:28:37] And then when it's gone, all right, that's the real, real start of the

[00:28:41] whole falling part of all of the stuff going on there.

[00:28:44] Yeah. You have spent time.

[00:28:46] Obviously, we both have spent time in Indiana.

[00:28:49] And one of the things that's always interesting to me as you drive through

[00:28:53] Indiana is the bonds that are in various states of decay.

[00:28:59] And it is true that any manmade structure that is unattended for,

[00:29:04] and it's always surprised me how little time it takes.

[00:29:08] And if you've ever gone to a house that's been abandoned for even a

[00:29:12] couple of years, it's amazing how quickly the land tries to reclaim

[00:29:16] that space.

[00:29:18] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:19] And the barn, once there was an outbuilding, it starts with this one

[00:29:23] little structure, which thankfully stays through all the different

[00:29:26] permutations of the house.

[00:29:28] Once there are outstructures, the outstructures change from what they

[00:29:31] are. That's a barn, it's a garage, it's a painter studio.

[00:29:34] Oh, it's this, it's not the other.

[00:29:35] Yes, soon as they're neglected, soon as the house is neglected.

[00:29:39] Part of the house is neglected at one point in the story.

[00:29:41] The rest of the house, it just gets overgrown.

[00:29:44] And various times later in the novel, people come back to visit

[00:29:49] the house and come back for this purpose or that.

[00:29:51] And they discover like a wing of the house has been overtaken by

[00:29:54] nature. A wing of the house is totally rotted away.

[00:29:57] And then the core original stone building is still there in the back.

[00:30:02] Yeah. Yeah. It's really fun.

[00:30:04] Very cool.

[00:30:06] Yeah. That was cool.

[00:30:06] I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

[00:30:08] I was happy to read it.

[00:30:09] I hadn't started it when we started talking about this.

[00:30:11] I thought it was a good choice for a group, a good choice for us to talk about.

[00:30:16] Yeah, really liked it.

[00:30:17] Yeah. I highly recommend.

[00:30:18] Definitely. Yeah.

[00:30:20] Yeah. Out of five.

[00:30:21] What are you giving it? Out of five.

[00:30:22] Out of five. I'm giving it a 4.1.

[00:30:26] OK.

[00:30:27] OK. The ghost. How about you?

[00:30:28] Ghosts. The ghosts weren't too much for you.

[00:30:30] Maybe a little bit.

[00:30:31] But I highly recommend reading.

[00:30:33] Well worth reading.

[00:30:35] I probably give it a 4.3 or 4.4 somewhere in that.

[00:30:38] It was really good, really solid.

[00:30:39] I enjoyed it.

[00:30:41] I think that the different voices really gave

[00:30:44] gave me a lot of joy.

[00:30:45] Yeah. It was good.

[00:30:46] Yeah. And on the audiobook, the voices are different as well,

[00:30:50] and they did an excellent job.

[00:30:51] That's great. Yeah.

[00:30:53] That's always something that I wonder about, like,

[00:30:56] oh, is there really good narrator that I should be listening to?

[00:30:58] Is there someone giving something else to the story?

[00:31:01] There are definitely books that I've listened to

[00:31:05] that were better for the person who is the voice over talent.

[00:31:09] And there have been a few that I stopped listening to

[00:31:12] because the voice over talent was not particularly good.

[00:31:15] And usually nine times out of ten when that happens,

[00:31:18] it's because the author chose to read it himself.

[00:31:22] And, you know, just because you're a good writer

[00:31:24] doesn't mean you're a good narrator.

[00:31:27] Yes. Yeah. The different talents.

[00:31:29] Yeah, for sure.

[00:31:30] So did they have the audiobook have a different narrator

[00:31:33] for each of the stories?

[00:31:35] Not each one.

[00:31:36] I think they had about seven total.

[00:31:38] So it was great.

[00:31:39] A lot, but not completely different.

[00:31:42] And they still had the, for instance, when you I think

[00:31:47] they have the same voice over talent who did Charles Osgood

[00:31:51] as well as the sisters.

[00:31:53] And so it was a male voice doing the female dialogue.

[00:31:58] But he did an excellent job of it.

[00:31:59] So that's right.

[00:32:01] I really didn't we didn't even touch about it.

[00:32:02] I love the true crime section.

[00:32:04] That was fun.

[00:32:05] Kind of a pulpy, trashy novel.

[00:32:08] It was really great.

[00:32:09] I was like, oh, it just kind of jumps out of nowhere.

[00:32:11] And it did perfectly.

[00:32:13] Yeah. And in the audiobook, they really do.

[00:32:15] I mean, it almost sounds like it was real when you're right.

[00:32:18] You know, I'm going to do this radio show.

[00:32:20] And it had that element to it, which was fun.

[00:32:23] That's fine. Yeah.

[00:32:24] It's really fun. Yes.

[00:32:26] So I also wanted to ask you about how's your banana bread

[00:32:30] business slash charity project going?

[00:32:34] Well, you're very kind to ask.

[00:32:36] As you are a very philanthropic, I try to be as well.

[00:32:39] We have been fortunate enough, my family and I to travel to Haiti

[00:32:43] and and build a school there strictly through selling banana

[00:32:47] breads that we baked in our own kitchen here.

[00:32:49] The situation in Haiti is so dire right now that we are not sending funds

[00:32:53] there currently, and we're not sending funds because we don't want to make

[00:32:57] our partners on the ground their targets.

[00:32:59] There's no there's no structure of any kind going on.

[00:33:03] There's no government that hasn't been for a long time, but the gangs

[00:33:06] have taken over to such a level that anyone who gets money from the few

[00:33:10] Western Union stations that are still around gets aid from the few

[00:33:14] shipments that are coming in over the border and smaller ports, not

[00:33:18] Port-au-Prince, our targets.

[00:33:20] And they're getting kidnapped and ransomed.

[00:33:22] And I really talking with my family and talking with my contacts

[00:33:26] and Haiti have had to make the hard decision to not

[00:33:30] extend anything at the moment because we don't want to be the reason

[00:33:34] that our friends in Haiti suffer anymore.

[00:33:37] So we're cultivating our lists, we're making it so when we're able to

[00:33:40] to send more aid, we will do another big banana bread fundraiser.

[00:33:43] We bake loaves and ship them all over the country and sell them here

[00:33:47] on Los Angeles on the West Side and the West Coast up and down.

[00:33:50] We deliver them a person if we're able to and people are kind enough

[00:33:53] to support us.

[00:33:54] We've baked a lot of loaves for people who don't want the calories we deliver

[00:33:58] into food banks here in Los Angeles because there's plenty of hunger

[00:34:00] here at home as well.

[00:34:01] And over the years, we've baked thousands and thousands of loaves

[00:34:05] and raised over two hundred fifty thousand dollars and built a school

[00:34:09] for 300 kids.

[00:34:10] And and the fact that the dollar goes so much further in the third world

[00:34:13] country really still allows us to stay.

[00:34:15] Yeah. Well, that is it's so impressive and so it's such a Greek cause.

[00:34:21] I visited Port-au-Prince when I was about 15.

[00:34:24] And saw the poverty and it's unlike anything you've ever seen.

[00:34:29] But the people were warm, generous, kind, big smiles.

[00:34:34] And it's just heartbreaking for all the reasons that they're in the situation

[00:34:39] they are now that, you know, every day people are finding it so hard to live

[00:34:45] in your banana bread.

[00:34:46] I mean, a lot of people know about my hot sauce

[00:34:49] kind of habit that occurred over covid and I'm still making my hot sauce.

[00:34:54] But the idea to donate the proceeds to that to food banks and things

[00:35:00] really was motivated by you, you know, you had your banana bread business

[00:35:04] and I said, oh, that's a great idea.

[00:35:06] So you are you are responsible for, you know, paying it forward, so to speak.

[00:35:11] That's very kind.

[00:35:12] I have been fortunate enough to have lots of the hot sauce here

[00:35:16] and to introduce you to new people here.

[00:35:18] So so much the fact that people like we are friends with hot sauce.

[00:35:21] Once you make it again, not a broker.

[00:35:24] I just introduce you.

[00:35:25] So yeah, your hot sauce is great.

[00:35:27] Our banana bread is great.

[00:35:28] We're all just trying to make the world a little bit better as we can.

[00:35:31] And I think that's all we can do.

[00:35:32] So I agreed.

[00:35:33] And now so my last question for you, Billy, is in your day job,

[00:35:39] you are a director.

[00:35:41] You live out in California, you direct a lot of commercials

[00:35:45] and you took part in the making of the Dunkings Super Bowl commercial

[00:35:51] with Brady and Matt Damon and the crew.

[00:35:56] Tell me about that.

[00:35:57] How was that experience?

[00:35:58] Was it as fun as it looked on TV?

[00:36:00] It was a really, it was a really fun experience.

[00:36:02] Tom Brady is amazing.

[00:36:03] He's taller than I expected.

[00:36:04] I'm a tall guy myself and he's taller than I am.

[00:36:07] And I've seen him seen him around town, you know, as you do.

[00:36:11] But it's my first time working with him

[00:36:13] and he was great and really kind.

[00:36:15] Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, they're great.

[00:36:18] Jack Harlow is awesome.

[00:36:20] Fat Joe was really cool to meet Fat Joe.

[00:36:23] It just it was a really fun time.

[00:36:25] The people from Duncan were great.

[00:36:27] So let us have some fun.

[00:36:28] Let us play.

[00:36:29] The neatest thing for me was that I have two daughters.

[00:36:32] My youngest one just turned 18 right for Christmas.

[00:36:35] And she was still on Christmas break when we were doing that.

[00:36:38] So I was able to hire her as a production assistant.

[00:36:40] And she was able to be around and she helped design.

[00:36:44] She helped cut and sew the logos on the prototype for the Dunking

[00:36:48] Attracts.

[00:36:49] And so she's really fun to have to share that experience with her.

[00:36:52] We had a great time.

[00:36:53] It was in Hollywood a couple of days.

[00:36:55] Yeah, as you can imagine, really high security around the set.

[00:36:58] Just around the general area, we had a lot of privacy concerns

[00:37:03] just because it was a super bowl spot and he didn't want anything leak.

[00:37:06] And as we've done for other projects in the past,

[00:37:08] but this was a really fun one.

[00:37:10] Really fortunate that I worked with Ben a couple of times on other Dunkin

[00:37:13] things and I think there's some more coming up hopefully.

[00:37:15] And they're just wonderful people and really willing to make fools of themselves

[00:37:22] because they love the product and they love what's going on

[00:37:24] and the Dunkin people were great to let us just kind of have some fun with it.

[00:37:27] And I think it was really well received.

[00:37:28] And I couldn't ask for anything more than that.

[00:37:30] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:37:32] I thought it was a real hit.

[00:37:33] And the chemistry between all three of them was really fun to watch.

[00:37:37] And not only was it like a good concept, but clearly they enjoy doing it.

[00:37:42] And that comes through on the film.

[00:37:44] Yeah, it was really great to do and a great crew.

[00:37:47] And you know, it's one of the things that I really enjoy about what I do for a living

[00:37:50] is that I get to work with people who work on TV and videos and movies.

[00:37:55] And we all come together for these little projects and we build our little family.

[00:37:59] We have this intense experience and then we all go off by different ways

[00:38:02] and we see each other and I feel like I know them all so much better

[00:38:06] when I see their names and credits and things.

[00:38:07] I'm one of the guys that stays in the movie theater through the credits

[00:38:10] to see who I know has worked on a film.

[00:38:11] And you know, and it's great because, you know, oh, yeah, that guy was cool.

[00:38:15] Oh, she was awesome. Yeah, we still do that.

[00:38:17] So that's it's the industry in this town.

[00:38:20] I know Washington DC has its own industry, but this industry is

[00:38:24] is a fun one to be a part of.

[00:38:25] You know, we tell funny jokes and we wear shorts to work.

[00:38:27] We have good times.

[00:38:29] So it's pretty fun.

[00:38:30] Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.

[00:38:32] Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

[00:38:34] It was fun to talk about the book and good to good to catch up with you.

[00:38:39] Yeah, you as well. Thanks, Jamie.

[00:38:40] I appreciate you asking me.

[00:38:41] It's good. I'm doing any time I like reading.

[00:38:43] We should all read a little bit more.

[00:38:45] Be good for us. Agreed. Agreed.