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    At the Edge of the Orchard
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    At the Edge of the Orchard
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    At the Edge of the Orchard
    Ebook321 pages5 hours

    At the Edge of the Orchard

    By Tracy Chevalier

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

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    About this ebook

    'A wonderful book; rich, evocative, original. I loved it' Joanne Harris

    “One in ten trees comes up sweet…”

    In the inhospitable Black Swamp of Ohio, the Goodenough family are barely scratching out a living. Life there is harsh, tempered only by the apples they grow for eating and for the cider that dulls their pain. Hot-headed Sadie and buttoned-up James are a poor match, and Robert and his sister Martha can only watch helplessly as their parents tear each other apart. One particularly vicious fight sends Robert out alone across America, far from his sister, to seek his fortune among the mighty redwoods and sequoias of Gold Rush California. But even across a continent, he can feel the pull of family loyalties…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateMar 10, 2016
    ISBN9780007350414
    Unavailable
    At the Edge of the Orchard
    Author

    Tracy Chevalier

    Tracy Chevalier is the author of eleven novels, including A Single Thread, Remarkable Creatures and Girl with a Pearl Earring, an international bestseller that has sold over five million copies and been made into a film, a play and an opera. Born in Washington DC, she moved to the United Kingdom in 1986. She and her husband divide their time between London and Dorset.

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    Reviews for At the Edge of the Orchard

    3.5/5

    310 ratings35 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really liked this book despite the fact the it was utterly depressing and most of the characters were deplorable. The end did offer a glimmer of hope at least. The depictions of life in the Black Swamp and even in CA in the 1800s were eye opening. While the psychological study of Robert and his family was interesting, it was so warped that you really have to extract some pleasure from the historical and naturalist aspects of the book or it just couldn't be endured.
    • 4/5
      Jumps back and forth between a few years in the Black Swamp of Ohio, where homesteaders James and Sadie have a very unstable relationship, and their son Robert, who after witnessing his parents' accidental deaths, heads West, ending up in California. He becomes an apprentice to a botanist who collects seeds and saplings to ship to England for the wealthy who are cultivating their "Pinetariums" and other opulent displays
    • 4/5
      Trees are pivotal to this story, apple trees and giant American redwoods and sequoias. Life is unforgiving and relentless in the The Black Swamp of Ohio in the 1830's. I found the struggle the Goodenoughs were having to establish an orchard of 50 trees, the required number to stake a claim on the land, was slow reading and I very nearly tossed the book. However tension starts to build when their youngest son leaves home after an unspeakable accident and the story really gets interesting! We follow him across America, through the crazy times of the gold rush, a variety of jobs and finally to a grove of giant trees in California, where he has a fortuitous meeting with a meticulous plant collector. I ended up loving the book and through Robert, the son who left home, I came to read about a part of American history that is probably not widely known and I found it compelling. Based, in part, on real events this story left me thinking about the characters for some time!
    • 2/5
      My lack of enthusiasm for this book came down entirely to the subject matter. Do I think Chevalier is a fantastic author? Yes. Did I want to read about a family living in the Maumee Valley planting an apple orchard while consorting with Johnny Appleseed? Not really.

      I began reading with a bad attitude, and nothing in the body of the narrative did anything to turn my frown upside down. Just not my cup of tea (or cider).
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this audiobook about a family with lives wrapped up in tree propagation. There were four different readers which made it very easy to tell each person apart. The Goodenoughs travelled west from Connecticut to the Black Swamp in Ohio where they took up a homestead where they got stuck in the mud. One of the conditions of the homestead was that each farmer had to have 50 orchard trees. Johnny Appleseed travelled the area selling seedlings and seeds to farmers so they could meet their quota. Most of these trees produced fruit that was only good for cider but James Goodenough had some grafts from an old tree brought by ancestors from England, the Golden Pippin. Life was hard in the swamp. Five of the Goodenough's children died of swamp fever (malaria?). Trees died and crops failed but somehow the family kept going. There was no love lost between the parents and Sadie, the mother, drank too much and slept with other men. In part two we hear the letters one son, Robert, sends back to his brothers and sisters from the various places across the west that he finds work. There's a clue that something happened to make him leave home but the reader doesn't find out what until after learning about Robert's life first as a gold miner and then as a scout for trees to send to Britain. His employer is William Lobb, a British man who has travelled the world looking for plants and trees to send home to Britain. William Lobb really existed and his life would be a fascinating subject for a book too.The Black Swamp was adjacent to the Limberlost Swamp in Indiana which was the locale of one of my favourite books when I was young, The Girl of the Limberlost. There are quite different views of the two swamps from these two books. In this book the swamp is unhealthy and dismal but in The Girl of the Limberlost Gene Stratton-Porter made it seem a wonderful place in nature. Interesting how two different writers can make one place seem so dichotomous.
    • 4/5
      I liked this novel but I had loved Tracy Chevalier's other books.I did enjoy Robert learning about California giant Sequoias. This was a real Chevalier type of writing where we learn about something from real life, from history through one of her characters. I found it hard to enjoy the James and Sadie parts as they were hard characters . Even Johnny Appleseed was weird.
    • 4/5
      I decided I didn’t like this book, but I decided I was wrong. The story of a pioneer family in a swampy area of Ohio was so depressing, but I kept reading and I’m so glad I did. That depressing story was necessary to set the background for a brother and sister who flee the depressing life. Well-written this story will grab you and have you cheering, and crying as you discover what happens to Robert and Martha.
    • 2/5
      Tragic family story; pioneer hardships, children dying of swamp fever, apple obsession, applejack alcoholism, isolation, accidental murder, incest, death in childbirth, Now want to know more about Johnny Appleseed and plant collection for export from America to Britain.
    • 3/5
      Robert Goodenough has learned so much from William Lobb, famed worldwide plant collector that in 1853 he is often sent to travel the Western United States in search of unusual specimens to be sold to other countries in the British realm, such as the giant sequoia. His skill in working with plants came naturally since his family produced an apple orchard in Black Swamp, Ohio, a small community where the pioneer Goodenough family’s wagon became mired during a westward migration from New England in 1838. Although Robert’s parents hoped to have fifty trees but disagreed, often quite vehemently, how the harvest should be used. James wanted “eaters” while Sadie favored “spitters” which used for apple cider and the alcoholic applejack, a product that Sadie was particularly fond becoming quite ornery when she was drunk. During one domestic violent episode, James runs away from the family to find his fortune during the gold rush. The details regarding Robert’s life-changing episode is initially not evident but revealed later in this historical novel. Tracy Chevalier continues in portray the lives of famous historical characters as viewed from the perspective of her fictional characters. In addition to William Lobb, this novel also includes John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed. Although this novel was enjoyable, I didn’t like it as much as several of Chevalier’s earlier books such as Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels.
    • 3/5
      I liked this book, but not as much as earlier books I've read by Chevalier. Some reviewers have disliked the founding Goodenough characters James and Sadie who have a bitter destructive marriage, but I've seen some of those in my own family and neighbors. I recognized the oppression and pure drudgery of rural life in a tough environment and how that can twist people. Those characters rang more true to me than the ones in the later half of the book who seemed more stereotypical. What stood out and appealed to me were the settings. Chevalier lovingly details the Great Black Swamp of northwest Ohio and the redwood/sequoia forests of California. As an Ohioan with relatives who live in both those places, it felt familiar yet strange. (The Ohio swamps have been drained and the land is fertile farm land with not much left in the way of orchards.) As an avid gardener, I appreciated the passages on grafting and caring for fruit trees; the annual rhythms of crops sowed and harvested; and the history of land, plants, and plant hunters.I also enjoyed the craft of the writing. The first part of the book is written in alternating scenes from the close third person James and first person Sadie. Chevalier bridges a time and character gap with letters from their youngest child Robert who left home and is making his way West. His story is picked up in close third person and interrupted by another series of letters from his sister Martha who fills in her story. Toward the end, Robert's story is again punctuated by his parent's alternating scenes in flashback. It's a clever structure and manages to mask the weaker characterizations of Robert and the other California characters. Altogether this was a satisfying read for me, but folks with less interest in the settings or plants might find it a bit of a slog.
    • 5/5
      I liked how each character had his/her own voice. For James, it was the third person voice. For Sadie, it was first person voice. Robert and Martha were also third person but first person when they wrote letters. Many in my book club did not like the book because they could not connect with the characters. I found it interesting how the character development was handled. I did not have lukewarm feelings toward any of them. Robert was my favorite followed by Martha.
    • 5/5
      James and Sadie Goodenough are settlers leaving Connecticut on their way to a place of their own. They settle in Black Swamp, Ohio. It's not an easy place to have settled because it's a swampy, mud-infused place that doesn't yield without back-breaking, soul-destroying work. To keep their land they must plant 50 apple trees in 3 years. John Appleseed sells them seeds and saplings, he also sells them Applejack - something that Sadie will use often to block out the harshness of being settlers in such a hostile place. James sees this weakness in Sadie (while that, and the fact that the woman would mate with a bobcat if it had pants on) and withdraws into his apple orchard, which Sadie can't or won't understand. Into this environment James and Sadie manage to bring 10 children into the world, 5 of them dead before adulthood.

      Fast forward to Robert, James & Sadie's 17 year-old son. He's far from home on his way west. He picks up a variety of odd jobs in different places on the way to the West. He's writing to his brothers and sister's who he misses a great deal. He never writes to his parents, we find out why in the story. Robert, who used to help his dad in the orchard and watched and did everything his father did, connects with William Lobb a famous plant hunter. Robert falls in love with the work and is quick to learn, partly because of his previous experiences with his father in the orchard.

      This book was very sad so I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't fond of sad books but if you like historical fiction that includes historical characters this is a must read. Robert has gone through so much you keep hoping that things will turn out alright. The reason Robert left home surprised me as did the ending - I cried. Another wonderful book from Tracy Chevalier.
    • 3/5
      It’s clear reading this book that’s well-researched. One of the characters that comes to visit James and Sadie and sell apple seedlings and saplings to them is John Chapman. You might know him as Johnny Appleseed. Her portrayal of him and his personality is how he really was (according to Google at least).Plant collector William Lobb plays a key role in the second half of the book. I hadn’t heard of him bust he is a real life person as well.The author weaves in a lot of information about plants and trees throughout the book. While I appreciated her thoroughness, I found this book to move along too slowly for me. There wasn’t a central conflict and the plot seemed to meander here and there. I loved The Girl With the Pearl Earring, also written by Chevalier. I’m not going to give up on her but this book was a miss.
    • 5/5
      Tracy Chevalier is a writer I urgently recommend to my readers. Pick up any of her novels, and help raise her reputation to a well-deserved higher level. Her eighth and most recent work, At the Edge of the Orchard, brings me up to date on her works. Tracy has talent to take the reader to times and places with detail and depth of characterization I greatly admire. Her best known work, The Girl with the Pearl Earring was my introduction to her, and I was smitten from the first line.Orchard begins in the spring of 1838. James and his wife, Sadie Goodenough, have left Connecticut to strike out on their own into the western U.S. James loves, and is obsessed with, apples. His family grew wonderful fruit, and he got some seeds and saplings from an itinerant apple salesman, John Chapman, also known as the legendary, Johnny Appleseed. Unfortunately, James selected a swampy stretch of ground, and the work to clear and drain enough lend to plant trees proved daunting. Sadie wants him to plant something that will quickly produce a cash crop. Tracy writes, “What made the fight between sweet and sour different this time was not that James was tired; he was always tired. It wore a man down, carving out a life from the Black Swamp. It was not that Sadie was hung over; she was often hung over. The difference was that John Chapman had been with them the night before. Pf all the Goodenoughs, only Sadie stayed up and listened to him talk late into the night, occasionally throwing pine cones into the fire to make it flare. The spark in his eyes and belly and God knows where else had leapt over to her like a flame finding its true path from one curled wood shaving to another. She was always happier, sassier, and surer of herself after John Chapman visited” (3). This second paragraph of the novel provides an English Professor with a bounty of images and ideas of a story spun out from this innocuous beginning.The family grew quickly with the arrival of 10 children – not all of whom survived into adult hood. The youngest, and James’ favorite of Sadie and Robert, became the focal point of the family. Fed up with her addiction to Applejack, a strong alcoholic beverage, James and some of the children abandon Sadie and take the wagon home from a local gathering. Chevalier writes, “My family was gone. I could feel it. I was all alone. That made me stop in the middle of the road and jest stand there. A wagon was comin towards me and a man was shoutin at me to get out of the way, but I couldnt move. Tears was running down me on the inside and the outside. // Ma. // I turned around and there was Robert. Of all my family I was glad it was him that found me, cause I loved him best even when he made me feel the worst. Robert was the Goodenough with the most future in him, the one the swamp wouldn’t get. // He held out his hand and said, I come to fetch you. // I was still cryin and I let him take my hand and lead me away like I was a child” (65).Tracy Chevalier has added to her wonderful collection of novels with At the Edge of the Orchard. Try this story – or The Girl with a Pearl Earring – and travel the rough and tumble years of the western expansion of the young United States. 5 stars--Jim, 8/21/16
    • 4/5
      I never come away from a Chevalier novel without knowing I have gained something. Sometimes that "something" is a wonderful bit of fiction, but often, it also is that more elusive classroom of life, where I have learned a bit more about the subject of which she's written. It can be painting a masterpiece, weaving one of my favorite medieval tapestries, finding fossils, or as in this book, more about trees and our nation's history in the early to mid 1800's. The story starts in the swamps of northwest Ohio (okay, I admit it. I didn't know there were swamps there) with the somewhat hapless and luckless Goodenough family, who are, indeed, good enough to make a mess of things, including planting the orchard that would allow them to claim ownership of their land. (Now that decree I did know about: to claim a sake of farmland, there needed to be 50 trees planted as an orchard in 3 years of settling, to show you were really serious about farming the land.) The story bounces back and forth between James and Sadie, sometimes sideswiping their surviving children, and then moves to follow the youngest, Robert, as he travels west. The day Robert first saw the giant sequoias of California was the day I also discovered old family pictures from 1962 when my own family discovered them as well. Chevalier has woven two actual figures into the novel, both of whom have crossed my interest radar in the past: John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) and William Lobb, each of whom helped transport trees (actually seeds, seedlings, and saplings) from their natural environment to new ones, often miles and growing zones away. Fascinating stuff, how we changed our world through plants. And because that fascinates me, the story built around it interested me, too. Tags: 2016-read, an-author-i-read, made-me-look-something-up, read, taught-me-something, thank-you-charleston-county-library
    • 3/5
      I've had mixed reactions to Tracy Chevalier's novels. I loved Girl with a Pearl Earring (perhaps the first to emerge in what's now an industry of painting-based novels), and I quite liked Remarkable Creatures, was less keen on Falling Angels and Burning Bright, hated The Virgin Blue, and didn't care much for The Lady and the Unicorn. (I chose to pass on The Last Runaway after reading a number of negative reviews.) At the Edge of the Orchard joins the ranks of the mediocre Chevalier books in my library.In the 1830s, the Goodenough family has moved from Connecticut to settled in the wilds of Ohio, attempting to establish an apple orchard in an area know as Black Swamp. The name alone should tell you that it will be a difficult venture. This family puts the "dys" in dysfunctional. Father James seems to love his apple trees--especially the sweet Golden Pippins--more than he does his wife and children. But he is a saint in comparison to his wife Sadie, a mean, vengeful, drunken slut. When she isn't drinking or knocked out from applejack, trying to get into another man's pants, or making her children feel like crap, she's plotting to destroy James's pippin grafts. If Chevalier's design was to create a truly despicable character, well, she succeeded on that score. But it's a little hard to enjoy a novel when you keep hoping a main character will die. There's not much motivation for Sadie's meanness, aside from the fact that she would prefer to grow "spitters," which are good for making applejack and hard cider, to "eaters." Sure, five of her ten children have died of swamp fever, but I never got the impression that she cared much about them anyway. As for the remaining children, well, at one point Sadie says the only reason she had them is to do work. James at least says that he doesn't want to leave the swamp because his children are buried there, and he has some kind words and an occasional hug for his surviving children. Sadie keeps trying to seduce John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) who frequently stops by with free seed, saplings to sell, and more applejack; she also gets drunk and has sex with a stranger in the middle of a fair (James catches her) and makes frequent insinuations that she has slept with James's brother (and that he was a lot better in the sack).Aside from the parents, youngest son Robert is the novel's main focus. His father teaches him how to graft striplings of Golden Pippins to the "spitters," and Robert develops a true love of the natural world. In the book's second section, something has happened (we're not told what until much later), and we find that Robert has left home and moved west. He has worked through a number of different places and jobs, but he's found a niche in California redwood territory, assisting William Lobb, an English horticulturalist who ships seeds and saplings home for rich landowners hoping to cultivate unusual species in their vast gardens. Several chapters consist of Robert's annual New Year's letter home to Black Swamp, and one is comprised of his sister Martha's similar letters to him (although he never received them. In between these we find out what happened to drive Robert from home and learn more about his independent life. I'm not sure this structure is the most effective way to tell the story. Yes, it creates some suspense, but maybe not enough to keep the reader engaged.It's obvious that Chevalier did a lot of research on horticulture, Chapman, Lobb, the Gold Rush, etc. But at times I admit that I sped through some of the sections on the differences between sequoias and redwoods, the best way to transport saplings, etc.--it just didn't interest me as much as it seemed to interest the author. My hatred of Sadie and some minor (but majorly sadistic) characters overwhelmed any other response I might have had, so, unfortunately, At the Edge of the Orchard is getting only 3 stars from me (and I seriously considered 2.4).
    • 4/5
      Ok. I’ll admit it. I bought this book for the cover. Kinda.Yes, the cover is what attracted me first, but also the author and finally the description. Back when Chevalier published what I think was her breakout book, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, I read it and a couple of her other books. Then she sort of fell off my bookshelf as sometimes happens. I’m glad to add this one to my set though. It’s a historical fiction novel set in frontier America, albeit a part that isn’t nearly as treated or romanticized as some like the Dakotas, prairie states or places in Big Sky country. Instead our hapless family washes up in northwestern Ohio in what is essentially a swamp. Let the wretchedness begin.The story is told in two main parts; direct narrative from the perspectives of James and Sadie, husband and wife who had to leave Connecticut because there wasn’t enough of James’ family land to go around, with he being a younger son and marrying beneath him. The first Sadie won’t let him forget, the second she believes, too, and it gives her an excuse to undermine him, the family and everything they’re working hard to overcome. Well the family is working, Sadie believes that one of the reasons people have children is to foist off the hardest work to. She’s a wholly unpleasant and surprisingly unsympathetic character. Usually in these kinds of books when there’s a severely put-upon woman who acts the harridan, the writer will suddenly give us some heartbreaking reason for it. In this there is no such magic wand. Sadie is a sociopath through and through and I wished she’d just fall into her jack bottle and stay there.The other piece of the story comes from letters written by youngest son Robert after he escapes his horror show of a life in Black Swamp. Semi-literate, he writes to his left behind brothers and sisters (ominous that mom and dad are not mentioned). He doesn’t receive a single reply, but keeps on for something like ten years. Now don’t get worried that you’re going to have to wade through hundreds of misspelled letters; you won’t. He writes one a year and sometimes skips years. He’s pretty wayward at first, but finally meets William Lobb, a man who collects plants for a firm in England. Without really meaning to, Lobb hires Robert and begins to teach him about the great trees of California; the Sequoia and the Redwood. Once again, Robert’s life is run by trees; immutable and uncaring, causing his silent awe and devotion to their care. The two types of trees in the book couldn’t be more different. The highly cultivated and domesticated apple which is the ruin of the Goodenough family. By ending up in swamp, the farming is poor and farming apples made more difficult because James wants eating apples and Sadie wants drinking apples. Neither do well and James has to be diligent in his grafting campaign or else Sadie will rip down the trees out of spite. Robert’s relationship with the sequoias and redwoods is no less demanding and only affected by humans when he has to pay to be able to collect seeds and saplings. Soon he’s doing this on his own and likes his solitary life among the giants.It doesn’t last with the arrival of not one, but two pregnant women in his life. I like their depiction and how he handles each of them and the way things end up, despite some more sorrow added onto the heap that had come before. The end was hopeful, which was more than I expected given the grinding misery of the first part.
    • 4/5
      At The Edge Of The Orchard, Tracy Chevalier, author; Hillary Huber, Mark Bramhall, Kirby Heyborne, Cassandra Morris, narratorsIt is 1838 and Sadie and James Goodenough, from CT, were traveling west having been asked to leave his family farm. Apparently, it was not big enough for all of the family members. Plagued by wagon troubles, they were forced to stop at the Black Swamp in Ohio, where they staked a claim and began to plant apple trees. It sounds like a terrible place, but the Government guaranteed their claim to the land if they managed to create an orchard with 50 thriving trees. There was conflict immediately between Sadie and James. She liked spitters and he liked eaters. Spitters were good for baking and made apple jack. Sadie loved and became addicted to the apple jack. Eaters were merely for good eating and Sadie rightly believed that James loved those apples more than he loved her. James resented the man, John Chapman, who brought Sadie the apple jack and who disapproved of and criticized his methods of raising and breeding apple trees. James grafted one tree to another to try and create a better apple. Chapman believed that was G-d’s work. Sadie sided with Chapman. She seemed to enjoy making James jealous, but she was really the jealous one. She was often devious and mean, conniving and vengeful. She had birthed 10 children, not all of whom survived, but they all helped in the orchard and witnessed the sometimes violent feud between their parents. James and Sadie were literally at war over the apple trees. She sabotaged his efforts and destroyed his trees when he used part of her spitters to graft to his eaters.After a tragic accident, Robert, barely 9 years old, takes off and does not return. He makes his way, finding all sorts of odd jobs to take care of himself. It was a time when child labor was acceptable and children often made their way on their own, struggling to survive. He sent letters home frequently, explaining how he was getting on, hoping for an answer from someone, but after almost two decades of letters with no response, he stopped. The mail was unreliable and he moved around a lot. His life was not easy, and although lonely, he seemed easy going and satisfied with his simple life. His sister Martha had learned about one of his letters, that her brother had not shared, and began writing her own letters to Robert, hoping for a return response. She told him all about her life and his family. It is through these letters and the voices of Sadie and James that the reader learns about all of the intervening years of tragedy and hardship that befell the family. The author painted a very lucid picture of those days gone by, of the swamp and the swamp fever that struck them down, of the difficulty of surviving and nurturing trees in the foul smelling mud without modern day equipment or technology, of the tragedy that befell each one who lived the hard life of a frontier family. We see Robert’s life turn full circle as he goes from drifter to a man who returns to the trees. Each character was drawn so clearly that the reader easily can picture an image in their minds. There is the vindictive Sadie, the sometimes violent James, the drifter Chapman, the quiet and obedient, thoughtful Robert, the shy and frail Martha who bore the brunt of her mother’s cruelty, and the drunken brother Caleb who was a no-account, quite clearly. At the end, the reader will be left wondering if the future would be full of hope or despair for Robert. It is a very well written book that will draw the reader in and hold his/her attention completely.
    • 5/5
      Chevalier, Tracy. At the Edge of the Orchard. 7 CDs. unabridged. 9 hrs. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781101924983.Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring) pulls no punches with this hard hit tale of a pioneer family that can't ever seem to get ahead. In 1838 the Goodenough family settles into the Black Swamp of northern Ohio and try to have a go at planting apple trees aided by the traveling salesman known as Johnny Appleseed. James cares for his apple trees better than he does his ten children (half of which have died), savoring the sweet apples they can make. His wife Sadie however, only likes the trees when the apples produced are bitter, making them ideal for alcohol and giving her an escape from the life she detests. Told from alternating viewpoints and letters, this tale of rough rugged living sucks listeners in with four distinct voice talents, all of whom embody and enliven the tale with their rough accents. Every drawl and whistle, and song bring the Black Swamp to life for listeners. Meticulously researched, heartbreakingly beautiful, deceptively simple, and superbly narrated. Another must read from the queen of historical fiction. - Erin Cataldi, Johnson Co. Public Library, Franklin, IN
    • 4/5
      I keep a List of the writers I want to keep an eye on. It originated before Goodreads and LibraryThing made it so easy to watch for new books and keep track of what I'd read and hadn't and what I owned and so on. Tracy Chevalier, rather predictably, made the list after [book:Girl with a Pearl Earring] … and I'm not sure why. I just found a note I made in a blog post about the "C" authors on my List: "Interesting books. Very art-oriented, which I love; not very character-oriented, which I don't love as much. By which I mean what I've read of hers is strangely removed from the characters, even in the midst of a passionate scene of any flavor." And that hasn't changed. At the Edge of the Orchard seemed like an obvious book to request from Netgalley, but I hesitated before pushing the button, because of that distancing. It's like there's a glass door between the reader and the characters. No matter how wonderful or how terrible the events going on in the narration – even with first-person narration as in this book – the reader is no more than an observer. It's a little chilly. It all begins with the struggles of the family uprooted to the Black Swamp, trying to achieve the fifty-tree orchard required to demonstrate the intent to permanent residence. The number "fifty" is skillfully woven throughout the story as it follows the younger son of the family in his flight away from something awful that happens. The suspense of the revelation of what that was, and in a couple of other places, is nicely handled, if short-lived. Chevalier's books are instructive, certainly. I never realized before recently how few evergreens there actually are (were) in Great Britain (until people starting sending them over from America). I never quite understood how grafting worked. I didn't know much at all about John Appleseed. And I love the story behind the naming of the monkey puzzle tree. I just wish I knew a little more about the inner workings of her characters. This is a quote that is highly relevant to me right about now: What he could not stand was the constant chatter of the man raking to his right: hours of dull stories about the gold he had found and drunk away, or the high prices to be paid for anything in California, or the trials he’d had on the overland trail to get here from Kentucky. These were all familiar tales to Californians, only enlivened by an unusual style of telling or a twist in the tail. The raker had neither of these, but doggedly pursued his stories with more persistence than he did his raking.The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
    • 4/5
      Interesting novel about desperate times in the Black Swamp of Ohio and the life of a man dedicated to trees. Sadness and some joy in the characters.
    • 3/5
      The good : wonderful characters who leap from the pages and employ you to have feelings about them! You either are amused by them, irratated, aghast, shed a tear, or want to slap them whatever it is you will be moved.The bad: I mentally compared it to The Wild Girl and several other frontier books and found it a midget among giants. I'm inclined to think it's because the characters , though engaging, where not fleshed out enough.
    • 5/5
      Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard is such an enjoyable work of historical fiction that I didn’t want it to end. It’s not just that so many of the characters were real (John Chapman/Johnny Appleseed, William and Thomas Lobb, Billie Lapham), but Robert and Martha Goodenough and Molly were so deftly drawn, they too seemed to have actually lived along with the others during this time period. The description of the redwoods and the Sequoias will satisfy any lover of nature (you may want to visit) and the information on apple growing was particularly enlightening. The hard life of John and Sadie Goodenough and their family in the Black Swamp of northwest Ohio was devastating to read, but laid the groundwork for what was to come in the novel. I learned about spitters and eaters, seedlings, saplings, and cones, and could almost taste a Pitmaston Pineapple. This is a book to treasure.
    • 2/5
      Never made it to the end of the book. It was difficult for me to want to read in an English slang as the pioneers spoke and the theme wasn't what I expected.
    • 4/5
      This is an intense story of a married couple, Sadie and James Goodenough, and their children who settled in the swamps of Ohio in 1838. James has a love of apples and struggles with the muddy swampland to grow an apple orchard. He buys his seeds and saplings from none other than Johnny Appleseed. James loves the sweet apples but his wife Sadie loves the sour apples, called spitters, as those she can use to make applejack, which helps her escape the trials of the swamp. The biggest trial they face is swamp fever, which constantly threatens the lives of them and their children.This is a dark book about a terribly troubled marriage. As their anger and disillusionment escalate, the book veers off from the swamp to follow the Goodenough’s youngest son, Robert, as he breaks away from the family to head west to California’s gold rush. Due to the love of apples that Robert learned at his father’s side, he eventually becomes a tree agent, collecting seeds and saplings to be sent to England. His story is told in part through his letters back home, to which he receives no response although his beloved sister Martha has also been diligently sending off letters. The author does revisit Ohio to tell of the tragedy that sent Robert away from home and what Martha endured after Robert left.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.This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      Although there is a dark side to this book there is also a bright spark of determination to it as well, and I think this is what captured me from the first, I LOVED it.The Goodenough's arrive in Ohio, basically because their horse and cart couldn't take them any further, where they decide to settle and grow apple tree's, only problem Black Swamp is no good for apples! James knows a bit about apple trees and wants to grow more sweet eating apples, but Sadie his wife wants to grow more "spitters" for making cider and applejack, of which is is extremely fond.They are a dreadfully dysfunctional family, with little love to spare. Sadie trying to destroy everything in her path. Accidents and hardships take their toll and a bizarre event tragically finishes things off.Robert the youngest son is different to all the rest, except perhaps Martha, his sister. And the second part of the story we follow him across America trying to find himself and a little peace. Never forgetting what his father taught him he eventually becomes a collector of trees for a company in England.This is definitely the best book I have read for a long time, maybe it is Tracy Chevalier's style of writing, I don't know, but you should perhaps give it a go, it is great.
    • 3/5
      1838, James and Sadie live in the Black Swamp, Ohio. They struggle to live planting and growing apple trees. Each year the fever takes one of their children. James loves his apples but Sadie loves the cider best. When tradgey strikes their son Robert leaves the swamp and never looks back.This for me isn't one of my favourite books by TC. The story is very bleak and has to have the most horrible characters in Sadie and James, especially Sadie.The story is set in the Black Swamp and Roberts childhood. Then a series of letters from Robert back home. The reader then has Roberts life has he tries to make his way, then we go back to the swamp to see what happened and the twist.There is a lot about apples and seeds in the story and at times I would say too much. I felt very bogged down and at times wanted to give up but needed to see what the events in the swamp was. Saying all this my favourite parts of the story was with the family in the swamp. The story dragged in the middle with Robert but when the reader is taken back to the swamp the story picked up again. When the what happened is revealed then the story again drags again especially after Martha. Molly is like a breath of fresh air too.Not my favourite book by far but enough to keep my interest but at times dragged and just too much about apples and seed collecting.
    • 3/5
      At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier is not what I expected. James Goodenough and his wife, Sadie leave Connecticut (and the rest of the Goodenough family) to find a farm of their own. They end up in Black Swamp, Ohio (because it was so muddy they could go no further). James and Sadie had ten children (but only five lived because of swamp fever from the mosquitoes). Life is hard in the swamp, but James is determined to make a go of his apple orchard. James and Sadie do not get along. Sadie resents the apples (because her husband pays more attention to the apples than her) and does her best to sabotage the trees. Sadie is a drunk (on applejack) the majority of the time. Things do not end well for the couple and their youngest son, Robert takes off. We then have a series of letters that explain what Robert did for the next seventeen years. Robert ends up working for William Lobb as a plant collector in California. We get to see how his growing up years affected the rest of his life and the choices he makes.At the Edge of the Orchard was okay. I normally love Tracy Chevalier's books, but I was not a fan of this one. It is a slow paced book with unengaging characters. Parts of the book are told in the first person (Sadie and James) point-of-view. Sadie's part is hard to understand with her backwards way of talking (and accent). The rest is told in the third person (about Robert). The descriptions of the apples, the orchards, and the plants/trees in California were lovely and interesting. The pace of the novel, though, is slow (I think apples grow faster). The writing is good, but the story is depressing. There is domestic violence, foul language, sex, and incest in this novel (just fair warning). I give At the Edge of the Orchard 3 out of 5 stars.I received a complimentary copy of the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      I am a huge fan of Tracy Chevalier, and have always loved her seemingly effortless ability to combine enthralling stories while instructing her readers in some hitherto unexplored avenue of knowledge. Her previous books have addressed the burgeoning tapestry industry in medieval Belgium [The Lady and the Unicorn], Vermeer’s experiments with a camera obscura in seventeenth century Delft [The Girl With a Pearl Earring] and quilting in nineteenth century America [The Last Runaway]. Throughout all of her novels she has also demonstrated that she is a fine writer, capable of ensnaring the reader with a few pages, or even just a couple of paragraphs.I was, therefore, intrigued to know what her latest book would have to offer, and I wasn’t disappointed. We are once more in nineteenth century America, in the Black Swamp area on northern Ohio, at the south-western extreme of Lake Erie. The Goodenough family have struck out west from their native Connecticut, and have staked a claim to a patch of marsh-ridden land with a view to growing apples. James, the head of the family, is an obsessive cultivator of apples, driven by what has become a family tradition. He has even brought with him the carefully tended boughs of an English apple tree (a golden pippin), carried all the way from Herefordshire by his ancestors, with a view to gratfing them to native tress and rearing them in Ohio.Life is hard in the Goodenough household. James and his wife Sadie have had nine children, but four have died, carried off by the relentless swamp fever. Having to face life with very little input from outside the family homestead has taken its toll, and James and Sadie spend most of their time at daggers drawn. They even differ over their preferences for apples: James like sweet apples such as the Golden Pippin while Sadie prefers ‘spitters’ the sour apples from which cider, not to mention the even stronger applejack, is made. Sadie is altogether too fond of applejack, which in turn has disastrous consequences for her relations with James. Chevalier cranks up the tension masterfully, with James and Sadie using their surviving children as pawns in their ceaseless matrimonial conflict.The Goodenoughs do have one fairly regular visitor, an itinerant apple salesman called John Chapman, better known in American folklore as Johnny Appleseed who was instrumental in spreading apple growing across the continent. Chapman would today be styled as a hippy, living in the wilds, always travelling barefoot and eschewing any animal products. His inclusion gives Chevalier a vehicle for the discussion of various aspects of apple rearing, though this is never obtrusive: she never lectures her readers, but instead imparts her extensive knowledge almost by osmosis.The Goodenoughs lurch on, from one family crisis to another. The action then moves on some fifteen or so years, and follows Robert Goodenough, James’s and Sadie’s son. He has ventured further west and finds himself in California during the 1850s goldrush. Still his father’s son, he remains enchanted with trees and is astounded when he first encounters the majestic redwood and sequoia. These are trees on a completely different scale, and Robert is spellbound.As always, Tracy Chevalier has created some simple but entirely believable characters, and conjured up the sheer hardness and brutality of pioneering life, mixed with a sense of wonder at the sheer scale of the natural world. She tackles so many different facets of life: commercial rivalry, the plight of women in the goldrush, the glories of untrammelled nature, and family loyalty. A great success.
    • 4/5
      I wouldn't say this will be one of the best of 2016, but this is nonetheless a good book and a super fast read. Good historical fiction--fictional people doing real things in real places, with a few real people thrown into the mix.Robert Goodenough is brought up, at least to age 9, in the Black Swamp area of Ohio. His family, from Connecticut, is trying to make a go of homesteading there in the 1830s. The need for 50 fruit trees to prove the claim is his father's biggest concern, as he loves the Golden Pippins his family orginally brought from England.At age 9 Robert unexpectedly strikes out on his own. He moves around, regularly changing jobs, and he finally ends up in California. There he meets William Lobb, and becomes a tree collector, shipping trees and seeds to England. William Lobb was real, tree and seed collecting was really a thing, the sequoia dance floor and bowling alley trees are now part of Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and the Black Swamp really was not a great place to homestead.