At the Edge of the Orchard

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If they can nuture enough trees to satisfy the authorities, then they can claim the land, and James Goodenough's legacy will remain. However, I felt that unacceptable though this might be to 21st Century sensibilities, it did ring true. While Robert isn't always a completely engaging character, his story is interesting and the people with which he surrounds himself is equally of importance.

That's a MASSIVE development in the plot and the continuation of the degeneration of the Goodenough family! The story begins in 1838, with Sadie and James Goodenough literally stuck in the mud in the Black Swamp, Ohio where they hope to stake their claim by growing an apple orchard. Chevalier does not hurry her revelations; the novel is almost halfway through before the buried secrets are even hinted at: “Robert had tried to lead an honest life, even when surrounded by dishonest people, but no matter how cleanly he lived now, he had made one mistake that he could never escape. In that it more than succeeds, though the unstable force here is more the mother, Sadie Goodenough, than the father, James.The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. My primary complaints with this novel are the characters were flat and stereotypical and the story dragged for the first two-thirds of the novel. What fascinates me most about Tracy Chevalier and her writing is the fact that in every one of her books I've been introduced to a subject, or a place that I knew nothing about before. Unfortunately the soil is not rich in this part of Ohio and it’s filled with trees and roots and stumps and to make a friable soil to plant these trees and keep them alive and producing, is hard work. They can often feel quite meandering and directionless for a good chunk of the book before it all slots into place and you can see where the story is going.

But James and Sadie, two very different people, never quite grafted and ended up with a sadly dysfunctional relationship. There are few neighbours and the occasional trips into the nearby town for supplies, trade and religious meetings form their only social life. Even as we follow the gyrations of Robert's journey west, they remain the destructive, charismatic heart, and the book might have stayed – one half-wishes, half dreads – with their emotionally vivid mutual self-destruction.Life there is harsh, tempered only by the apples they grow for eating and for the cider that dulls their pain. Robert's is of the archetypal cowboy, bent on his journey of rugged individualism to leave all that is bad, and making good simply by going west. SPOILER ALERT- Tragedy strikes, his son leaves and shifts aimlessly around the west, while the family dies off like untended saplings. I am not going to recount the plot, or dwell on the individual characters other than to say that I found them well drawn and convincing and that after my early misgivings, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Sadie's first person poison-angst, alongside James's stoic third-person reflections, give way to an epistolary exchange between Robert and Martha that is deeply touching in its crossed-wires and its hunger for connection.

The only family member who shares his Apple interest and is side by side learning with his father, is son, Robert. James and Sadie are passionate pioneers but unfortunately their passions collide with devastating consequences – James with his devotion to his beloved sweet apples and Sadie with her lust for applejack, the strong liquor made from the inedible “spitter” apples. I kept reading and thinking it couldn't possibly get worse between these two, and then something more would pop up as James and Sadie told their story in alternating POVs. That's not to say I wasn't enjoying the book, as I was happy to follow the two generations of the Goodenough family and the apples they grow which provide the central theme, but I was often wondering where the story was going, who was meant to be the protagonist etc. Whether is is Mary Anning, discovering fossils on the beach in the early 1800s (Remarkable Creatures, 2010), or Griet the young Dutch girl who became the model for the artist Vermeer (Girl With A Pearl Earring, 2001), this author's writing always captivates me.Just having the word "Orchard" in the title is probably enough to get my attention; but an apple orchard plus Tracy Chevalier plus a good audio rendition with a short waiting list, and I'm 100% committed.