Highly recommended, Tracy Chevalier delivers a splendid novel.
The prose, the characters, and the story itself are all on point.
I loved this book.

This was an amazing book by an amazing author. The story was breathtakingly wonderful and the plot was full of twists. Thank you so much for allowing me to review a copy.

This was a very compelling story that featured a family by the name of Goodenough. Their story is intermingled with bits about John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. Parts of the Goodenough family story were difficult to read and broached topics that were sensitive, but it was very well done. I felt for the sadness and suffering the family faced, especially Robert, the narrator. This one will stay with me.

At the Edge of the Orchard is one of those novels that in the hands of a lesser writer you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t have liked and maybe not even finished. The narrative development, slight at times and frenetic at others, feels a bit out of balance and not utterly cohesive. Things happen incredibly slowly then incredibly quickly. Some characters should be entirely unlikable. And there’s a lot more detail about apples then you were probably looking for. But Tracy Chevalier is not a lesser writer, and so her language and ability to inhabit characters to lend them a wholly compelling voice carry you along page to page until all of a sudden you’re turning a final one and wondering how did that book end so quickly?

The first third of the novel introduces us to the Goodenough (as inappropriate a family name as there is) family eking out an ugly, hardscrabble life in Ohio’s Black Swamp, a malaria-ridden setting that has killed nearly a half-dozen of their children in the past decade. James and his wife Sadie have spent that time farming and growing apples, though they’re at constant war over the apple crop: James wants “eaters” (especially his Golden Pippins, a particular type he carried with him from Connecticut) and Sadie prefers “spitters” — sour apples meant not for eating but for making cider and, more importantly to her, hard “applejack” alcohol, of which she is inordinately and unhealthily fond. “War” is only a slight exaggeration, with James, for instance, at one point having to “fortify” his trees with palisade-like structures to keep Sadie from destroying them. It’s a bitter, mean battle, often made meaner by Sadie’s drinking, and it’s a war that extends to the surviving children, taken out on them both emotionally and physically, especially the two quieter ones, Rob and Martha. Others entangled in their battles include a pair of helpful neighbors and John Chapman (better known in folklore as Johnny Appleseed).

It’s easier to feel pity for James in this scenario, as he is more often the one provoked/attacked, though he has his ugly moments. Sadie is difficult to like or sympathize with, though Chevalier offers up a few moments that break through, such as when John notes how hard a time she has around other women, or when she is stunned to find that he seems to recall the number of apple trees that have died more readily than the number of their children. The vivid detail creates a world of stunning difficulty and grief, which also helps us empathize at times, but mostly it’s her distinctive, lively first-person voice that keeps us willing to go along. Luckily, Chevalier has a good sense of when to break away from this bitter, dysfunctional family and does so before it starts to wear too much on the reader.

The second section begins with a series of letters from an older Robert, who has left the Black Swamp (why is a mystery though it’s made clear he’s running from something terrible) for parts West, where he moves around from place to place (though always drifting farther west) taking on a series of odd jobs, until he lands in California. He tries his hand at gold mining and a few other things, but fortune shines on him in the form of William Lobb, a naturalist who collects plants and sends them over to a British nursery. The two meet in a just-discovered Sequoia grove (Calaveras Grove, just east of San Fran), where they bond over their shared dismay at the destruction of the regal trees and the new “gold rush” of tourism (a hotel, a bowling alley, a dance hall atop a Redwood stump, etc.). Rob ends up working for Lobb collecting seedlings, saplings, and seeds from all over California. Here his kinship with trees, formed in his childhood bond with his father, comes full circle, as will other parts of his life, since it’s an oft-learned lesson in literature and life that running from one’s past seldom means escaping it. This section is not as vivid or compelling as the first one, partly because Robert himself is a less driven, more passive character than either his father or mother. In fact, his quiet character is often overshadowed by the strong female characters we meet, including the owner of a boardinghouse, the wife of one of the businessmen who laid claim to the sequoia grove, and a young woman who does what she must to survive out west, whether that means cooking or lifting her skirts (or in one scene, both at nearly the same time).

This more passive, quieter section is enlivened by Chevalier’s craft choices, such as telling several parts of the story via letters, the multitude of distinct voices, the non-linear structure which has us moving back and forth in time, and the mystery surrounding just what drove Robert out of the Black Swamp and what has been going on with his family since.

The ending section is where, as noted above, things get a little frenetic and the narrative feels somewhat unbalanced and rushed, wrapped up a bit too quickly and neatly. As well there are several moments where I wish we could have lingered with the emotional impact of events a bit more. But these were minor complaints. Overall At the Edge of the Orchard is a vivid historical novel, sometimes compelling and always insightful in terms of human life and interaction, told with warmth and compassion for its characters and with Chevalier’s typical attention to craft.