Settling in the swamps of early 19th-century northwest Ohio, the Goodenough family works relentlessly to establish an apple orchard that reflects respective dreams before their youngest child heads to Gold Rush California to collect seeds for a naturalist. By the best-selling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring. Simultaneous.
From internationally bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, a riveting drama of a pioneer family on the American frontier
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.
1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Roberts past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.
Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet.
From the Hardcover edition.
From international bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, an ambitious American novel of a pioneer family and a westward push that extends over three generations and across a continent
The Goodenough family have left nineteenth-century New England to settle in the swamps of western Ohio, bringing with them branches of a favorite apple tree. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle between James and Sadie Goodenough over what to do with the fruit, revealing irreconcilable differences in character. The escalation of this war resonates through their children and forces the youngest, Robert Goodenough, to make an agonizing choice that haunts him as he runs away, grows up, and moves ever farther west. Only among the redwoods and sequoias of goldrush-era California does he find solace and, eventually, answers.
Moving back and forth between Ohio and California and anchored by two real-life tree menlegendary Johnny Appleseed and the English plant collector William Lobbthis epic novel chronicles the implosion of a pioneer family and the shock waves it sends through the generations and across America.
