Out & About October 2017

OA books

Set in Ohio in the early 19th century, At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier is the story of the Goodenough family and their attempts to grow an orchard in the Black Swamp. HELEN SHEEHAN and LISSA GIBBINS are enthralled by this tale of a disfunctional family, interwoven with the art of planting trees Branching out Ohio, 1838. James and Sadie Goodenough have settled in the Black Swamp, planting apple trees to claim the land as their own. Life is harsh in the swamp and as fever picks off their children, husband and wife take solace in separate comforts. James patiently grows his sweet-tasting ‘eaters’ while Sadie gets drunk on applejack made fresh from ‘spitters’. Their fighting takes its toll on all the Goodenoughs – a battle that will resonate over the years and across America.

Fifteen years later, their youngest son, Robert, is drifting through Gold Rush California and haunted by the broken family he fled years earlier. Memories stick to him where mud once did. When he finds steady work for a plant collector, peace seems finally to be within reach. But the past is never really past and one day Robert is forced to confront the brutal reason he left behind everything he loved. In this rich, powerful story, Tracy Chevalier is at her imaginative best, bringing to life the urge to wrestle with our roots, however deep and tangled they may be.

A merica in the early part of the 19th century presented a harsh and challenging life for the pioneers who lived and laboured there. Tracy Chevalier’s latest compelling and fascinating book At the Edge of the Orchard follows the trials and tribulations of the Goodenough family, beginning in the inhospitable Black Swamp in Ohio. James and Sadie Goodenough are an unhappy couple, locked in battle over almost everything, and in particular James’ attempts to grow a certain type of English apple tree, the Golden Pippin, in the Black Swamp. He’s hardworking with a passion for sweet- tasting apples, so wants to grow “eaters”. Sadie, a drunk with a vicious temper, is determined to grow “spitters” that can be turned into alcohol. “They were fighting over apples again…an argument rehearsed so often that by now they both played their parts perfectly”. Their five hapless children look on in despair, but two of them, Robert and Martha, enjoy a special bond with each other that sees them through the worst of Sadie’s excesses. And to James’ great pleasure Robert has inherited his love of growing and nurturing trees. Inevitably this maelstrom of a marriage, more like a war Sadie declares, falls apart spectacularly and Robert has to flee, leaving his beloved gentle Martha behind. The first part of the book is narrated in two voices, those of Sadie and James, but once Robert has run from his family we continue the story through a series of letters to his brothers

Although this is a tale of family passion, love and hate, hardship and betrayal, its central theme, and what holds everyone’s stories together, is that of trees. From the humble apple tree to the magnificent and vast redwoods of the US, this is a tribute to the amazing lives of woods and orchards: “They dwarfed a person with their girth and the volume of wood they thrust towards the sky”. James and Robert practice the craft of grafting apple trees in the unforgiving earth of the Black Swamp: “The process of grafting trees did not take long, but like everything he did with apple trees…James was methodical”. Chevalier has done her arboreal homework and manages effortlessly to weave the many facets of growing, harvesting and even collecting seeds, into the narrative. The lives of the trees and the lives of pioneers are interlocked, they are co-dependent – they triumph or fail together. In fact, this author’s great talent lies in her ability to research a chosen subject and hang a gripping tale around it; slavery in The Last Runaway , Victorian mourning in Falling Angels and Dutch Masters in Girl with a Pearl Earring , to name but a few of her wonderful novels. This is a book that offers several different narrative voices, an education in the cultivation of various trees, an insight into the lives of early American pioneers and a sweep across the US; that’s a lot to write about, but Tracy Chevalier pulls it off. She’s in a class of her own – it’s a great read from start to finish.

and sisters, informing them of his progress across the wilds of America. “Dear Brothers and Sisters, I am writing on NewYear’s Day from Texas, where I have been working on a ranch for almost two years”. However, poor Robert, who writes to his family over a period of 17 years, never hears back from them. He declares in his final letter: “ …I left the Swamp and I never had a letter back…Your brother for the last time, Robert”. Next we take up his story in California, where he finally finds a job that he loves; collecting sequoia and redwood seeds and saplings for his rather peculiar boss, William Lobb. However, underlying everything Robert does and feels, is the as-yet unexplained events that led to his fleeing the Swamp and his guilt at abandoning his sister, Martha. Despite her quiet nature, she is made of sterner stuff and is desperate not only to know what happened to Robert, but to find him too: “Send for me and I will come… I am your sister Martha”. The characters leap from the page. Sadie, vengeful, drunken menace though she is, still has a heart: “I turned around and there was Robert…I loved him best even when he made me feel the worst”. Chevalier writes with compassion and understanding about the flawed lives and loves of all her cast. Even Robert’s bad tempered horse, known only as ‘the gray’, is an amusing sidekick: “Apart from his other caprices, the gray was not fond of climbing higher than foothills and baulked and sidestepped much of the way”.

Helen Sheehan and Lissa Gibbins are writers and owners of Aide Memoire, Great Bedwyn. Inspired by their passion for words, they write memoirs, edit novels and documents and proofread for a wide range of clients. Email: lissa@aidememoire.biz helen@aidememoire.biz

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