Set in the late nineteenth century in New Brunswick, The Heart of the Ancient Wood tells the tale of a mother and daughter who move to the woods to escape vicious gossip in the town. Despite the isolation they soon create a comfortable home for themselves and come to know the animals who live in the area. Years go by and Miranda becomes reacquainted with a young man that she knew when they were both children. Their potential romance is hindered by their conflicting philosophies about the natural world until one day when a terrifying encounter forces Miranda to question many of her ideals.

Charles G.D Roberts (1860-1943) was a poet and prose writer. After a childhood in New Brunswick, he became a heralded poet who later turned to fiction, writing an extensive series of animal stories and pioneering a genre that remains popular today. His works include Eyes of the Wilderness, The Vagrant of Time, and Earth's Enigmas. Roberts spent the last years of his life in Toronto, where he died.

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Thomas Hodd is an Associate Professor of Canadian and Atlantic literature at Université de Moncton. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Literary Review of Canada, The Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, and Studies in Canadian Literature, among others. He is co-Editor of The Antigonish Review and author of #NOMORENOTES (Anstruther, 2016). His study of Charles G. D. Roberts’s writings on the First World War appeared recently in The Great War: From Memory to History (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015).

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