Tracy Chevalier's new novel, At the Edge of the Orchard, is a heartbreaking narrative of an Ohio pioneer family's struggles that bears no resemblance to the pastoral stories in the Little House series.

The novel begins amid the loamy misery of 19th-century rural Ohio. James and Sadie Goodenough and their 10 children—swamp fever ends up claiming five—have traveled from Connecticut in search of a place to put down roots. When the family's wagon becomes stuck in the mud, their grueling, cross-country journey comes to an abrupt halt, and the Black Swamp becomes home by default.

While readers will likely find it tough to sympathize with the hard-drinking, ill-tempered and foul-mouthed Sadie, her seemingly stolid and mild-mannered husband is no more sympathetic. Obsessed with the welfare of his apple trees, especially his rare and delicate Golden Pippins, James makes his orchard the third party in their relationship.

But when a traveling apple tree salesman becomes a frequent visitor to the Goodenough's Black Swamp home, Sadie becomes smitten by the charismatic man. Known as John Appleseed, he provides an escape from her daily drudgery with a steady stream of alcohol-infused applejack.

After a random act of violence shatters the Goodenough family's already precarious existence, the couple's son, Robert, flees the Black Swamp, straight into the muscular arms of the California Gold Rush.

While some readers might grow a bit restless with the slow and steady pace of Chevalier's patient narrative, her impeccable research and the abundance of fascinating historical anecdotes about everything from grafting apple trees to the circumference of the mighty redwoods adds up to a pleasureable literary experience.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In this latest pearl from Chevalier, James and Sadie Goodenough settle in 1838 Ohio with their five children and plant seedlings provided by a man named John Appleseed. James loves the apples, put-upon Sadie loves the applejack, and their marriage founders. Fifteen years later, son Robert escapes his shattered family in California's dense redwood forests.

John Chapman (better known as Johnny Appleseed) makes a cameo appearance in Chevalier's new historical (following The Last Runaway), but this is not the Disney version of frontier life. James Goodenough has moved his family to northwest Ohio in the 1830s. He is determined to grow apples, as he did in Connecticut, but circumstances have forced the family to live on the edge of the Black Swamp, a bad place for an orchard. In an intriguing twist, in this fractious family it is James's wife, Sadie, who is a belligerent drunk, addicted to hard cider and applejack. This situation can only end in tragedy, and when it does, youngest son Robert heads West while still a child. The story of his adventures alternates between the hardscrabble years in Ohio and his subsequent wanderings, which lead him to California during the Gold Rush, though he finds work prospecting for seeds instead. His benefactor is an eccentric Englishman who collects redwood seeds and seedlings for the estates of his wealthy British patrons. VERDICT With Chevalier's excellent storytelling ability and gift for creating memorable characters, this novel paints a vivid picture of the hard and rough-hewn life of American pioneers on their Westward journey. [See Prepub Alert, 9/14/15.]—Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Chevalier may not be able to trump her wildly successful second novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, but her eighth outing is a compelling showcase of 19th-century American pioneering spirit in which a family from Connecticut struggles to establish an apple orchard in the swamplands of Ohio. James Goodenough can trace his family and his beloved Golden Pippin apples back to England, though he seeks his own future away from his family's farm. The story of his adventure going west unfolds from his point of view as well as from that of Sadie, his contentious wife, a tough woman with a wild libido and a hankering for applejack. True-life figure John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) plays a role in the Goodenoughs' fortunes, as does British plant collector William Lobb, who becomes a key figure to James and Sadie's youngest son, Robert, when circumstances force him to flee Ohio and make his own life on the West Coast. Against a backdrop of family travails in Ohio and personal revelations in California come intriguing facts about apples, such as their division into "eaters" and "spitters" (used for apple cider and applejack), as well as how American pine trees, redwoods, and Sequoias were painstakingly introduced to England. The author's insightful observations about domestic life and the pull of relationships bring depth to a family story that inevitably comes full circle in a most satisfying way. (Mar.)