Explore the real-world places that appear in The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Frank's Cabin in the Pines, Maya's Childhood Home, Pittsfield High School, Maya's Boston Apartment, Boston Public Library and 6 more.
Deep woods near Pittsfield, Berkshire County — the novel's dark heart
Frank's isolated cabin in the woods is the central locus of dread in the novel. It is here that teenage Maya and Aubrey were drawn into Frank's hypnotic, cult-like influence over the summer that would define their lives. It is ultimately where all roads lead as Maya returns years later, determined to expose what Frank did to Aubrey — and what he did to her own memory — and to stop him from claiming another victim after seeing the YouTube video of the young woman dying in the diner.
The rural woodlands of Berkshire County have long been dotted with isolated cabins and seasonal retreats, many of which date back to the 19th century when the region became a fashionable escape for Boston and New York elites. Stretches of dense second-growth pine forest cover much of the county's interior.
The cabin is fictional, but the landscape of dense pine forest around Pittsfield and the surrounding Berkshire hills remains wild and sparsely populated. Visitors to October Mountain State Forest can experience terrain very similar to that described in the novel.
Visit: October Mountain State Forest (park)
Pittsfield, Berkshire County — her mother's house
When Maya's past comes crashing back after she sees the YouTube video of the young woman dying across from Frank, she returns to this house — her mother's home in the Berkshires where she grew up. Here she excavates fragments of her past and discovers hidden messages embedded in the book written by her deceased Guatemalan father. The house is a place of grief and suppressed memory, where the truth about the summer Aubrey died has been buried under years of silence and addiction.
Pittsfield, Massachusetts developed as a mill and manufacturing city in the 19th century and became a bedroom community for the broader Berkshires region. Many working-class families settled in modest single-family homes that still characterize its residential neighborhoods today.
Pittsfield remains a small city of roughly 43,000 residents at the geographic heart of Berkshire County. Its neighborhoods feature a mix of Victorian and mid-century housing stock, and the city has undergone modest revitalization through arts investment in recent decades.
Pittsfield, MA — where Maya and Aubrey were seniors
Maya and Aubrey were high school seniors in a Berkshires town when they first fell under Frank's spell during the summer before graduation. Their friendship, their ambitions, and ultimately the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed their bond are all rooted in the world of their high school years. The fateful summer unfolded in the space between the end of one school year and a future that Aubrey never got to see.
Pittsfield High School has served the city's youth for well over a century, producing graduates who have gone on to careers in arts, industry, and public service across New England. The Berkshires' schools reflect the region's mix of working-class and professional families.
Pittsfield High School continues to operate as the main public high school for Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It is located in a residential section of the city and serves several hundred students annually.
Boston, MA — Maya's present-day home
Seven years after Aubrey's death, Maya has built a life in Boston with her loving boyfriend. She is in recovery from the secret addiction she developed to cope with her fragmented memories and the guilt she carries from that summer. When she discovers the YouTube video of Frank with the dying woman, the carefully constructed calm of her Boston life begins to fracture. The apartment represents the 'normal' life she is trying to hold onto as the past pulls her back toward the Berkshires.
Boston has long been a destination for young adults from across New England seeking work and anonymity, particularly from smaller communities in western Massachusetts. The city's dense neighborhoods — from Allston to Jamaica Plain — house a large population of twenty-somethings in transition.
Boston remains one of New England's most vibrant urban centers, with a population of roughly 675,000. Its neighborhoods are a patchwork of historic architecture and modern development, and the city consistently ranks among the most livable in the United States.
700 Boylston St, Boston — research and reflection
As Maya tries to make sense of her fragmented memories and investigate Frank's past, the Boston Public Library represents the kind of research and intellectual pursuit she undertakes to decode the hidden messages in her Guatemalan father's book. The library stands as a counterpoint to the irrational, hypnotic power Frank exerts — a place of facts and records against a world of manipulation and lost memory.
The Boston Public Library, founded in 1848, was the first large free municipal library in the United States. Its Copley Square building, designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1895, is considered one of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance Revival architecture in America.
The Boston Public Library remains one of the largest public library systems in the United States, with its Copley Square central branch a major cultural landmark. It holds nearly 24 million items and is open to all residents and visitors, featuring magnificent murals by John Singer Sargent.
Visit: Boston Public Library (library)
Berkshire County woodland paths — the summer wanderings
During that fateful summer, Maya and Aubrey spent hours walking the forested trails of the Berkshires with Frank, drawn deeper into his world with each excursion. The woods function in the novel as a space where normal rules and social guardrails fall away, where Frank's hypnotic influence is strongest, and where Aubrey ultimately collapses and dies. Maya's hazy, gap-filled memories of these walks are central to the mystery she must unravel years later.
The forests of Berkshire County are part of the Taconic and Hoosac mountain ranges and have been shaped by centuries of logging, agriculture, and regrowth. The region's wilderness attracted Transcendentalist thinkers in the 19th century who saw the forests as spaces for spiritual contemplation.
The Berkshires offer hundreds of miles of hiking trails through state forests, including October Mountain State Forest and Pittsfield State Forest, both of which feature dense pine woodlands and secluded interior terrain popular with hikers, birdwatchers, and hunters.
Visit: Pittsfield State Forest (park)
297 West St, Lenox — cultural backdrop of the Berkshires
The Berkshires summer world that Frank, Maya, and Aubrey inhabited exists alongside the region's famous cultural institutions. Tanglewood represents the idyllic, polished surface of Berkshire summers — the world of concerts on the lawn, families picnicking — that stands in eerie contrast to the dark events unfolding in the woods nearby. The novel uses the region's pastoral beauty as a foil for the psychological horror at its center.
Tanglewood has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937, when the BSO relocated its summer season to the sprawling Lenox estate. The grounds were originally the country estate of the Tappan family; Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in a cottage on the property in the early 1850s and wrote portions of 'Tanglewood Tales' there.
Tanglewood remains one of the most celebrated outdoor music venues in the world, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each summer for classical, jazz, and popular music performances. The Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer season runs from late June through Labor Day weekend.
Visit: Tanglewood (landmark)
Pittsfield area, Berkshire County — Maya's best friend's house
Aubrey's family home is the site of the friendship that defined Maya's adolescence. It is from this domestic world that Aubrey was drawn away by Frank's magnetism — the same pull Maya felt, but which proved fatal for Aubrey. Maya's obsessive jealousy over Aubrey's closeness to Frank, and her guilt at having survived when Aubrey did not, are feelings that were formed in the space between their two homes. Returning to the Berkshires, Maya must face what happened to her friend.
The residential neighborhoods of Pittsfield reflect the town's working and middle-class history, with housing stock ranging from late Victorian triple-deckers to mid-century ranch homes. Community life in these neighborhoods historically revolved around local schools, churches, and parks.
Pittsfield's residential neighborhoods continue to house a diverse mix of longtime residents and newer arrivals. The city has invested in neighborhood stabilization programs in recent years as part of broader economic revitalization efforts.
Boston's South End — Maya's father's cultural world
Maya's deceased Guatemalan father left behind a book whose hidden messages become a critical key to understanding Frank and the threat he poses. The father's Guatemalan heritage and the coded text he wrote before Maya was born represent a story from another time and place that nonetheless speaks directly to her present danger. Decoding his messages is one of the most intimate and emotionally resonant threads of Maya's investigation into her own past.
Boston's Latino community, including a significant Guatemalan population, has historically concentrated in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain and the South End. Many Guatemalan immigrants arrived in the Boston area during and after the civil conflict that wracked Guatemala from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Boston's Latino community remains a vital part of the city's cultural fabric, with active community organizations, cultural events, and businesses across several neighborhoods. The Boston Public Library maintains Spanish-language and Latin American literature collections that serve these communities.
Visit: Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (historic site)
Main Street, Great Barrington — Berkshires small-town life
The small-town social world of the Berkshires — where everyone knows everyone, where a stranger like Frank can seem both exotic and dangerous — is embodied in places like Great Barrington's Main Street. Maya's summer memories include the ordinary textures of small-town life that made Frank's presence so disorienting: he was an outsider who somehow made himself completely central. Returning to this world as an adult, Maya sees it through different eyes.
Great Barrington is one of the oldest settlements in Berkshire County, incorporated in 1761. It was the birthplace of W.E.B. Du Bois and was the site of one of the first successful tests of alternating current electricity in 1886. Its Main Street has retained much of its historic 19th-century commercial character.
Great Barrington has transformed into one of the most vibrant small towns in New England, known for its independent shops, restaurants, and farmers' market. It consistently ranks among the best small arts towns in the United States and serves as a hub for Berkshires visitors.
Visit: Great Barrington Historic District (historic site)
Boston's Back Bay — Maya's recovery and daily life
Maya navigates the streets of Boston's Back Bay as she tries to maintain the quiet, stable life she has built with her boyfriend while secretly battling her addiction and the resurgence of traumatic memories. The orderly brownstone streets and the Charles River Esplanade represent the controlled, 'recovered' life she is fighting to preserve even as Frank's shadow stretches back into it. It is somewhere in this urban world that she first encounters the YouTube video that tears everything open.
Boston's Back Bay was created from a massive landfill project completed between 1857 and 1882, transforming a tidal estuary into one of America's finest Victorian neighborhoods. Its alphabetically arranged streets — Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth — were laid out according to a unified Parisian-inspired urban plan.
Back Bay remains one of Boston's most desirable and recognizable neighborhoods, home to Newbury Street shopping, the Copley Square cultural district, and the Charles River Esplanade. Its preserved Victorian brownstones are among the most valuable residential real estate in New England.
Visit: Charles River Esplanade (park)
More by Ana Reyes: All Ana Reyes books
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