At the Edge of the Orchard

Product Information

People had gone west leaving behind all sorts of trouble; what they found in California was the space and freedom to create new trouble. I've read two other books by this author ( Girl With a Pearl Earring and Remarkable Creatures) and really liked them. I really enjoyed the author’s notes at the end which tells more of the real people who inhabit the pages of this novel and add to the story.

We also learn about swamp fever and how it easily took the lives of some of James and Sadie’s children, which possibly explains a part of why James loves his trees and Sadie hates them. James wants to use the apples for things like food and making a decent living, but Sadie uses a large portion of the apples to get drunk.But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert’s past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.

This is one of those books: The voices are rich and individual; the attention to detail impressive; the scent of apples, damp earth, and pines runs potently through the whole. Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. I've read thoughts from a few readers that say they were able to understand or empathize with Sadie more as the book progressed and she revealed more of herself in her story, but I never felt that way.Stuck in a stagnant marriage, in a swampy homestead, he spends his energy grafting trees trying to make his perfect apple, rather than fix his fractured home life. The Goodenoughs are not a happy family and soon enough, their youngest child, Robert, flees the family home and travels west, eventually reaching California. It’s not a happy life, and not just because of the difficulty of raising healthy apple trees or children.

But James and Sadie, two very different people, never quite grafted and ended up with a sadly dysfunctional relationship. Chevalier ( The Last Runaway, 2013) excels at creating a highly accessible read that takes a surprisingly dark look at the brutal conditions of frontier life. 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.

James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. In that it more than succeeds, though the unstable force here is more the mother, Sadie Goodenough, than the father, James. She spends much of her time drunk on applejack and trying to sabotage his efforts at growing good eating apples and developing their land.