Moving Forward

I just finished Alice Hoffman's latest book, a collection of connected short stories called The Red Garden. It has the light touch of a magical element that I have always enjoyed in her other novels. The stories take place in a small town in the Berkshires and take the town from its founding to modern times, with reoccurring themes of eels, bears, a ghost child, collies, and a garden with soil that is blood red. I was totally immersed in the audiobook, read skillfully by Nancy Travis.Then that New England accent would wrench me out of the story. Nancy Travis has lived in Boston and New York and has the New England habit of pronouncing forward as foe-ward. That dropped r kept jarring me out of the story. You would think after all these years surrounded by New Englanders I would be used to it. I can't complain, her slight  New England accent is perfectly appropriate to the story. I just never realized how many times Alice Hoffman uses "forward" in the book.
I recommend The Red Garden, it is wicked awesome.