Review: The Orchardist

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

William Talmadge is a gentle, solitary man living in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century. His orchard grows in the foothills of the Cascade mountain range where he tends his crop of apples and apricots with great care. The orchard and foothills have been his home since the age of nine. When he was just thirteen, he buried his widowed mother and lost his teenage sister to an unsolved disappearance. His life the last fifty years has been simple, uneventful.

One day two teenage girls steal apples from him at the market. He doesn't chase them, assuming from the way they look they must be hungry and alone, one of them obviously pregnant. Puzzled, Della and Jane follow him to the outskirts of his orchard and watch him from a distance. Talmadge feels sorry for the two and begins to earn their trust by leaving food for them when he goes to work on the trees. Just as the two are feeling safe, the calm of the orchard is shattered by men carrying guns.

This is just the beginning of a sweeping story, set in a time when the American west was still a bit wild, where trains were new transportation, and bands of men still wrangled wild horses. Even though this is the author's debut novel, it certainly doesn't read like one.


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