NEWS
- In Caddis Wood a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award (Novel & Short Story)
- New reviews! Read about reviews from The Literary Review and San Francisco Book Review and others
- In Caddis Wood has been selected as fall “Indie Sleeper” selection (Publishers
Weekly)
- In Caddis Wood has been selected as a Midwest Connections pick (Midwest Booksellers
Association)
- "Like" Mary's author page on Facebook to keep up with the newest information about publications, readings, and more.
Press for In Caddis Wood
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW, SACRAMENTO BOOK REVIEW, TULSA BOOK REVIEW | NEW REVIEW
A love story about both a marriage and a landscape, In Caddis Wood brings the Wisconsin forest to many-colored life and is filled with specifics about the flora and fauna that inform Hallie’s poetry and, ultimately, Carl’s final work. Nature both enlivens Carl and Hallie and destroys much of what they hold most dear, but the beauty of their forest retreat is powerful enough to renew itself even after the devastation of fire and pollution. The analogies among the landscape’s evolution and Carl and Hallie’s lives and marriage are seamless and effective, and Mary Rockcastle’s lovely prose makes it impossible not to be swept up in the peace of Caddis Wood.
BRODARTVIBE'S BLOG | NEW BLOG REVIEW
In life, every day people overcome adversity, lose those they love, fight or suffer with debilitating illnesses. This story is about one family navigating through what life has given them. This story touched my heart and I will be sure to keep this on my shelf to remind me of the power of love and the strength of family. I urge you to put it on yours, as well.
THE LITERARY REVIEW | NEW REVIEW
In Mary Francois Rockcastle’s novel, In Caddis Wood, grief has no expiration, and memories have no
boundaries. Carl, a successful architect
in his early sixties, is struck by a sudden and mysterious illness and although
his wife Hallie rushes to his aid, she is soon rebuffed when he suspects her of
having an affair. Memories of their
parents’ betrayals and weaknesses rise like ghosts and intermingle with the
present against the backdrop of Caddis Wood, the family’s summer house, a
setting that is at once stunning and harsh.
Rockcastle wonderfully integrates the beauty and brutality of this
natural world into her prose while darting back and forth in time. Gazing at the aftermath of a fire that killed
their son-in-law, the couple notices life creeping back in nature even as it is
drained from Carl: “The blackened landscape and charred stumps have receded
beneath a riot of ferns, shrubs, and saplings . . . Together they gaze across
the rolling grass, moved by the multitude of tones, the rim of smoldering
trees.” —Dana Schwartz
FICTION WRITERS REVIEW | NEW REVIEW
"While reading In Caddis Wood (Graywolf), Mary François Rockcastle’s second novel, I was immediately struck by its resemblance to Wallace Stegner’s masterful Crossing to Safety. Both books examine long-term relationships and the problems of growing older. Both pay homage to the importance of place, in this case, a summer home in the woods of Wisconsin, in securing the characters, and both display a solemn, awed regard for the natural world. Like Stegner, Rockcastle deftly describes this circumscribed world. Her regard for the beauties and ambiguities of nature breathe life into Caddis Wood."
ST. BRIDE'S LITERARY GROUP | NEW BLOG REVIEW
Forgiveness and letter pancakes. Without forgiveness families shatter. With forgiveness and well-worn traditions like letter pancakes for breakfast - they can survive the most excruciating betrayals and tragedies. In Caddis Wood is the intimate story of a 35-year marriage and the delicate state of human nature juxtaposed with the natural landscape that cradles the home of Hallie and Carl Fens.
The story is written in third person allowing the distinct perspectives of Hallie and Carl to resonate through the narrator. Their life flows from present truths that are both bridged and shored up by a history that has eroded the family on some fronts and at the same time has reinforced the most critical parts of its foundations. The story is perfectly paced and, like a deeply rooted marriage, difficult to see end under any circumstance.
In Caddis Wood is a beautifully crafted novel. Taking the time to experience it ~ is time well spent.
PORTLAND BOOK REVIEW | NEW REVIEW
In Caddis Wood by Mary F. Rockcastle combines a strong sense of place with family drama. Told in alternating points of view, husband and wife Carl and Hallie combat Carl’s debilitating illness until Carl discovers letters written to Hallie by another man. This shakes his faith in their relationship and Hallie’s devotion. Memories abound in this lyrical novel that explores the inner workings of marriage and the bond between two people over time that tightens and expands as they grow and change together and within their family. It’s this family that offers the couple a chance to forgive and heal one another.
Rockcastle presents a deep love of the environment and a realistic view of both environmental degradation and the degradation of a marriage in her novel. While her characters have their flaws, hope lies in their chance for redemption, if willing to get dirty, take close note of changes in the environment around them, whether in the natural world or the romantic one, and are ready to embrace the challenges and rewards of a long-term bond. Rockcastle works with a delicate brush and paints a picture of a marriage and the fortitude these characters have to endure and flourish.
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE | FEATURED REVIEW
It is Mary François Rockcastle's remarkable accomplishment to find in
those everyday occurrences a story of great moment -- the sort of drama
that defines and marks most of our lives, however "average."
Make no mistake: Rockcastle's characters are distinguished in their
own way. Carl is a celebrated architect; his wife, Hallie, is a
respected poet. But as their story is told, alternating between their
perspectives, what matters is the very familiar trouble they encounter:
their betrayal or abandonment by their parents; their unhappiness in
their marriage, with Hallie looking elsewhere for comfort; their fraught
relationship with their twin daughters, Cordelia and Beatrice (a very
literary couple they are).
The story, such as it is, centers on Carl's late-in-life discovery of
Hallie's earlier emotional infidelity, just as the two of them are
confronting his mortality, as his inevitably fatal neurodegenerative
disease begins to manifest itself and is finally diagnosed.
Back and forth the thoughts and reminiscences of these two characters go, with their stories and memories framed by their time, past and present, in their cabin in Caddis Wood, a summer place in Wisconsin. Through each, we learn of the accident that shaped one daughter's life, and of the fire that claimed the other girl's husband.
THE NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
It is to author Rockcastle’s credit that we feel compassion for
everyone inhabiting this story, and that we blame no one for their
foibles or their all too human failures, most of which are sins of
omission committed by all of us as we strive to meet our own needs along
with those of the people we love the most. This family is so real, so understandable, so in need of comfort each
in their own way, that we want to embrace them in their grief, applaud
their reconciliations, and learn from their loving fortitude. In that
sense, this sometimes sad but ultimately uplifting tale reminds us that
even when love is laced with anger and disappointment it can regenerate
in the comfort and safety of a family grounded in what really matters:
unconditional affection and acceptance, and the knowledge that each
member has been there for the other, no matter what they are called upon
to face or to share. Achieving all of this is clearly an accomplishment for any family—and a notable achievement for any writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With a setting divided between the couple's Minneapolis home and their
evocative forest retreat, the novel's chapters ricochet between Hallie's
and Carl's points of view. Suffused, appropriately, with imagery of the natural and man-made
worlds, Rockcastle's skillful pacing weaves together the family's
tumultuous history with its uncertain present. A mature love story
offering a clear-eyed glimpse of the challenges and rewards of a long
marriage.
SHELF AWARENESS
The seasons of a year and of a marriage are the themes of this poetic and illuminating novel. Nature plays a starring role; Rockcastle knows every twig and bush, bird and flower of the Wisconsin forest setting. Rockcastle has written an examination of a marriage, a paean to nature and a warning about ongoing environmental degradation and manages to make them all engaging.
Gracefully moving between past and present, Rockcastle portrays the tangled emotions of a troubled marriage, of a family struggling to rise above tragedy. A strong and insightful novel this reader was reluctant to see end.
BOOK LIST
There are two sides to every marriage, and both the Fens, Hallie and Carl, get to tell their impressions of a nearly 40-year union during what will turn out to be the last year of Carl’s life. Eventually diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, Carl begins his year in the grips of an unknown malaise that subjects him to frequent blackouts, hallucinations, and other bodily infirmities and indignities. Hallie exhaustively researches his symptoms, only to have her quest for answers put her back in contact with a man she became fond of during the period when she and Carl had separated nearly 10 years earlier. While Carl confronts the evidence of how easily he might have lost her at that time, Hallie must work to reassure Carl and herself, before it’s too late, that he was the only man she ever truly loved. Elegiac and poignant, Rockcastle’s indelible portrait of a fragile yet enduring relationship teems with shimmering images, reflecting the solace and wisdom to be found in nature.
HEY SMALL PRESS!
In Caddis Wood is the story of a husband and wife, Carl and Hallie, whose lives are thrown askew by illness and questions of infidelity. The novel is split between their perspectives, and Rockcastle succeeds in writing both characters believably, avoiding the reduction of one (or both) to a caricature. This is her first novel in more than a decade, and fans of her last book, Rainy Lake, will be happy to see that she carries on the quality of work here. Aging, jealousy, sickness, and regret are abundant here, but there is also love. Novels like this make descriptors like ‘domestic drama’ and ‘psychological realism’ anything but pejorative. Appropriate for all adult fiction collections.
WHAT AUTHORS ARE SAYING
“In Caddis Wood brings us close to pain and loss, but also, eloquently, considers the kind of secret, ineradicable regret that so often shadows us as we think back on our lives. Mary Rockcastle beautifully calibrates the way a couple, and a family, move from ease to extremity and gradually back again.” -- Rosellen Brown
“It isn't a paean—that is too simple and joyous; it isn't an elegy, for
the people and woods and rivers we come to know in this fine novel live
on. Maybe Mary Rockcastle's In Caddis Wood is a passionate and loyal
record, a journal, an inquiry, a love song sturdy and resilient.” -- Susan Straight
"In Caddis Wood is an extraordinary and original novel, emotionally wrenching and lovely and true. The book had me in tears at the end: such glorious, inevitable sadness, Carl’s and Hallie’s love for each other veined with anger and disappointment but always alive and present in both of them. A marvelous read -- artfully constructed on the one hand, entirely organic on the other.” -- Julie Schumacher
