In "Girl With a Pearl Earring," Tracy Chevalier carried us back to the Dutch city of Delft, where she immersed us in the life of a celebrated 17th-century artist and one of his muses. In her eighth novel, "At the Edge of the Orchard," she plants us in rough and tumble 19th-century America amid the triumphs and struggles of the men and women who dared to go west.
At its onset, this is the story of the Goodenough family, farmers from Connecticut who in 1838 settle in the unwelcoming swamplands of northwest Ohio. James and Sadie are the antithesis of happy. Sadie's a nasty, mean-spirited alcoholic who baits her children and husband, making their lives miserable. She's jealous of James' obsession with his apple trees. He loves their tasty fruit, while Sadie thinks the apples are only good for making applejack.
Their hand-to-mouth existence is hardest on their five children, whose lives implode after a horrific family fight in the apple orchard. The story of the two decades that follow is told through Robert Goodenough, James and Sadie's intelligent, sensitive and, no surprise, damaged son, who sets off for the western half of the country more to escape his old life than to find a new one.
But this is as much an ode to the flora of California as it is the story of Robert. He becomes "a tree agent," collecting pine cones, seeds and saplings that are sent to horticulturists in England. The mighty sequoias and redwoods of America are all the rage in English gardens.
Robert, who loves trees as much as his father did, is an expert at nurturing plants, but a failure at connecting more than superficially with the people around him. His encounters with a handful of big-hearted individuals guide Robert toward forgiving himself for what happened in the Ohio apple orchard decades before, and they teach him how to love and be loved. These caring people include his sister Martha — she and James write letters to each other for 20 years, though most are lost in the mail; a mining camp cook named Molly he meets on his journey west, and the real-life horticulturist William Lobb. Another historic figure in this novel, the man known as Johnny Appleseed, visits the Goodenoughs during James' childhood. Though he plays a bit part in the novel, his work selling apple trees and seedlings foreshadows James' work as a tree agent.
Like "Girl With a Pearl Earring," "At the Edge of the Orchard" paints a picture of a time and place peopled with nuanced and fascinating characters. It begins with hopelessness and disillusionment, but like a carefully nurtured seedling, plants its roots in a yearning for love and blossoms into a story of hope for the future.
Memmott's reviews also appear in the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post.
