What is the importance of the yellow house in the novel, North Woods?

The yellow house is another of the novel's primary settings. All of Mason's characters are connected via their relationships to the yellow house. The young couple who flees their colony in Chapter 1 discovers a clearing in the north woods and settles here, thus marking the inception of the house and its 300-year storyline.

Over time, the yellow house becomes a home to characters including Charles, Alice, and Mary Osgood, William Teale, Robert, Lillian, and Helen. Other minor characters visit the house to see friends, acquaintances, and family, or in search of information.

The house absorbs the spirits and stories of its former inhabitants. Because these ghosts live in the house, whoever visits or lives here communes with the specters of the past.