Redwood follows Ellen Bruce as she enters adulthood, navigating the clashing social currents of pious New England farmers, southern belles from South Carolina, slave-owning atheists from Virginia, and sophisticated Philadelphia socialites on her journey to discover the secret of her parentage and craft her own identity as a strong American woman. The novel's embedded slave narrative provides a powerful early prototype for later anti-slavery fiction. Ellen's formidable mentor, Debby Lenox, a single woman who stands over six feet tall and makes her own rules about what constitutes respectable behaviour for women, is remarkably refreshing and original almost two centuries after Sedgwick crafted her.

This new edition includes a historically and theoretically informed critical introduction that situates the novel within American social and literary history, also featuring a bibliography for further research and appendices detailing the significant differences between the two nineteenth-century editions.