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. 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. Over the years Ella discouraged Alice’s fascination with the book; once, Alice found a copy and began to read a story called “Alice-Three-Times,” but Ella took the book away. Another time Ella discovered Alice following Althea’s online fans in chat rooms and message boards; Ella was very upset, and Alice decided to give up her interest Althea and the book altogether.

Ella receives a letter saying Althea is dead. This news prompts her to settle more permanently with Alice in Brooklyn. Ella soon marries Harold, a wealthy New Yorker she meets while waitressing a cocktail party, and she and Alice move into the fancy apartment where Harold and his daughter Audrey live. Alice thinks she sees the redhaired man who kidnapped her in the coffee shop where she works; he is reading Althea’s book and leaves quickly when Alice sees him. Thinking their bad luck is back, Alice determines to tell Ella the next day. When she arrives home from school, however, the apartment has a terrible smell, and Harold, Audrey, and Ella are gone. In the apartment, Alice finds an envelope containing a title page for “Alice-Three-Times.”

Alice turns to an acquaintance from school, Ellery Finch, who is a “deep fan” of Althea’s book. Alice learns when she visits him for help that his only copy was stolen. They return to Harold’s apartment, where Harold threatens them with a gun and offers no information on Ella. Finch and Alice go to a diner, where he shares the plot of “Alice-Three-Times,” in which a neglected princess takes revenge on others. Finch and Alice begin to see dangerous characters from the Hinterland following them. Their attempt to buy a new copy of the book fails. They visit a fan, Ness, whose blog claims she found gates to the Hazel Wood, but Ness refuses to tell Alice how to get there. Alice learns of some strange unsolved murders upstate in a town called Birch, and she and Finch set out to find the town. Their rental car is destroyed on the way—they find it filled with seawater, an act of vandalism that means the Hinterland characters are on their trail.

They take a bus to Birch, but when they arrive, Finch admits to Alice that he is secretly working for a Hinterland character named Twice-Killed Katherine; he agreed to get Alice to Birch for her. Katherine and a nameless Hinterland cab driver accost them. Katherine tells Alice to kill herself, and when she does not, the cab driver slits Finch’s throat. Katherine sends Alice to the Halfway Wood, a supernatural forest of Hinterland creatures and challenges she must defeat to get the Hazel Wood. Alice eventually finds her way to the door of Althea’s estate, which is every bit as lovely and perfect as Alice always envisioned. Inside, though, is a confusing funhouse-style array of rooms and visions from Althea’s memories. Alice finally meets Althea, who insists despite the supernatural surroundings that she is real, and who reveals the truth about Alice’s real identity: Alice is actually a character in the Hinterland tale “Alice-Three-Times,” and Ella stole her away from the Halfway Wood when Alice was just a baby. Characters from the Hinterland have tried to get her back ever since, pursuing Ella with near misses (the “bad luck” that often plagued them and prompted moves to new places).

Althea grips Alice’s arms and transports her to the Hinterland, where Alice encounters Janet, Althea’s former love interest who initially found the door to the Hinterland. Now Janet helps refugees from the real world, instructing them to stay away from Stories, the characters in the tales woven by the Story Spinner. Janet explains how Althea took the tales as her own for her published book when she left the Hinterland, causing bridges between the worlds. Alice wants to be ex-Story and return to New York, but the Story Spinner instead leads Alice into her story, where she will relive the repeated life of Alice-Three-Times forevermore. Alice breaks her story thread with the help of the redhaired man (a character in the story), Janet, and Finch, who recovered with the help of other refugees in the Hinterland. Finch stays behind when Alice returns to New York. Alice reunites with Ella and tries to assimilate into the world as an ex-Story.