(Editors’ note: This article was updated on September 29 at 4:50 p.m.)
At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier. Penguin Books 2016. 406 pp.
It is 1838. There are too many brothers to divide the land in Connecticut belonging to the Goodenough family, so James is more or less forced to leave and seek his fortunes elsewhere. Part of the reason is that the other brothers’ wives do not like his wife, Sadie. In truth she is a rather difficult person.
They are traveling through a muddy swampy area in Ohio and the horses get so bogged down in the mud that they stop there. James’s passion is growing apple trees and if they can start an apple orchard of 50 trees the land will become theirs. It doesn’t go well. Sadie is an alcoholic and makes things difficult. They have five children who have to assume grown up responsibilities at a very early age. Robert, age nine, is the youngest, the smartest and most capable of the children. When tragedy strikes Robert leaves.
That is the first part of the tale. It now skips to 1853 and Robert is in California and also has a passion for trees, although he has held many jobs in the intervening years. He is fascinated with the Giant Redwood and Sequoia trees and eventually becomes involved with a man who is exporting seeds and seedlings of those trees to England. He does become fairly successful, but is still haunted by his past and it does catch up with him.
The first part of the story was depressing, but I really enjoyed the second. Robert is a good man, and although this is a fictional novel, there was a lot of good history in it and several characters based on real people, one of them being Johnny Appleseed. This is a good read and even though the first part was a bit of a downer, it also was interesting. – C.M.
My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman. Houghton Mifflin 2006. 242 pp.
This novel takes place in the seventies at Dewing College, a small girls school (fictional) near Boston. It was formerly a two year secretarial school but now is a four year college conferring baccalaureate degrees, although it is dismissed as second rate by the more exalted institutions in the area. David and Aviva Hatch, both PhD’s, are professors there and house parents in one of the dorms. Their daughter, Frederica, is the narrator of this tale. Growing up in a dormitory always full of girls who adored her, she was raised by very liberal and progressive parents. She is a very bright and thoughtful girl.
When Frederica was sixteen, the college hired a most attractive woman as a house mother for one of the dormitories, Laura Lee French. She is the complete opposite of Frederica’s serious and sensible parents. She is a fashion plate in contrast to David and Aviva who don’t give a hoot to what clothes they wear, and she has a dazzling smile. The girl students are fascinated. Unfortunately she is also devious and conniving. And, it turns out, she is Frederica’s father’s former wife!
At this point the plot begins to twist and turn in shocking and hilarious ways. When Laura Lee sets her sights on the newly appointed college president, Doctor Woodbury, the situation starts to spin out of control. That is when the great blizzard of l978 (remember that one?) descends on New England and brings the book to a satisfactory conclusion.
Elinor Lipman is a favorite author of mine. I have read most of her books and this one certainly measures up. My favorite is The Inn at Lake Devine. – P.M.