At the Edge of the Orchard

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Imagine burying five children, and spending nine years in constant war with your environment just to keep yourself and your family alive, while being mostly isolated from family and from neighbors. How would you hold up under these circumstances? How would your family have dealt with this life? What would your children do? What would your marriage be like? With impeccable research and flawless prose, Chevalier perfectly conjures the grandeur of the pristine Wild West . . . and the everyday adventurers—male and female—who were bold enough or foolish enough to be drawn to the unknown. She crafts for us an excellent experience.”

October 1962 in Washington, DC. Youngest of 3 children. Father was a photographer for The Washington Post. Robert runs away, generally westward, and winds up in California where he meets William Lobb, a plant collector who sends seeds and seedlings to England. Robert soon becomes William's right hand. Meanwhile, Robert also reconnects with a former lover, Molly Jones. Martha's life continues to be harsh. She is raped by a neighbor and later by her own brother, who fathers the child she is carrying when she learns that Robert is in California. She reaches Robert just as Molly announces that she is also carrying a child, and that it is likely Robert's. After Robert does not hear from his family for 17 years, he finally gives up trying to communicate with them. Everything about this communication is foreign to us in an age where technology minimizes great distances. Discuss the real costs of leaving your family in the era this book is set. Would you be able to make this kind of choice?Here again, are the same problems as in Burning Bright: pacing horribly off, misfocused plotting, odd and dissatisfying plot twists, and characters you like, but could pass in the street and not recognise due to how 'average Joe' or just nice they are.

A very depressing story in the beginning, historically interesting for the second part, but much time spent on apples and seeds. More time spent on the historical than in fleshing out the characters, or so I felt. Molly, who appears in the second half of the novel brings a welcome and refreshing, even uplifting boost to this novel. Not until them last part did we get a better understanding of Robert and it was this part of the book I enjoyed the most. So a mixed reaction from me, loved the writing, the story was interesting but I felt it was a little disconnected. Definitely worth reading though. As always appreciated the author's note which lets the reader know what was factual and what was fiction. This is set in the Wild West at the time of the Gold Rush and tells the story of Robert Goodenough, who travels West to escape from his violent past. My previous exposure to Pioneer Family stories was via Laura Ingalls Wilder. But, this is no happy, wholesome Little House on the Prairie feel-good book.However, as I said earlier, I didn't think the book was divided well. The first part was too long to feel like an introduction, but too short to feel like an equal part of the book. The ends of both parts of the story veered over an edge into melodrama. The characters aren't very nuanced - they're either extremely sympathetic or not-even-slightly sympathetic, and come very close to falling into stereotypes (the whore with a heart of gold, the bitter shrew, the stolid frontiersman, &c).

At The Edge of the Orchard is brutal yet tender, educational and evocative. Tracy Chevalier is a first-class author and this is quite possibly, her best novel yet. 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. 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. She totally immerses her readers into the time and the places of her stories, and she has done it once again in At The Edge of the Orchard. The rest of the family members are dysfunctional in their own way. We know that family members are all different in size, shape, personality, and these are no different. While this story is about their family life through the years, and apples are at the core (no pun intended) it becomes the story of Robert, the son, who shares the same passion as his father, for apples. Robert, the eventual lone survivor of the Goodenough clan. With impeccable research and flawless prose, Chevalier perfectly conjures the grandeur of the pristine Wild West . . . and the everyday adventurers male and female who were bold enough or foolish enough to be drawn to the unknown. She crafts for us an excellent experience. The story is told via James and Sadie's voices, and these voices are colourful and vibrant. Tracy Chevalier's impeccable research echoes throughout this quite brilliant, evocative and enriching story.

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There are so many things that happen throughout the course of the story that are tragic or sad or just plain awful. BUT!! the ending is hopeful. I would imagine that some readers will realize how dark and gritty this story is and maybe they'll want to stop reading. I promise, though, if you can hang in there for a while, the ending is so worth it. 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. I thought she was incredibly selfish and mean, mean, mean from the beginning to the end. Yes, this is a grim tale but amid the doom and gloom there is the tiniest glimmer of hope – a sense that those sequoia seedlings might take root and begin anew.

This author is meticulous in her research, not only into the lives of those who lived in the swamps of Ohio during that period of time and the California Gold Rush, but also the growing and nurturing of trees, which I found to be very interesting. This is a very good story about an unforgiving land and those who tried to endure there.As well as this desolate Ohioan setting, we experience the excitement and wonder of Gold Rush California when, Robert, the Goodenoughs’ youngest son heads West but don’t expect a sudden reversal of fortune for the Goodenough offspring! This is a story about family, sacrifice, determination and the need to set down roots. There aren’t a lot of laughs but then the pioneers didn’t have an easy time of it. You know when you read an amazing book where the landscape becomes one of the characters? You know: the moors in Return of the Native, or the highlands (and the house) in Wuthering Heights. In At the Edge of the Orchard, you have trees. Apple trees, and redwoods, and giant sequoias.