Historical Fiction is one of my favourite genre's and this book teaches so much about effects of the dreadful hardships of the early settlers as they spread across North America. It is sewn together as skilfully as thenquilts the people slept under. The story is heart breaking and I learned more about the culture of trees that one could possible think was interesting, but I thought it was.
A story worth reading.

On paper, this book should be dull. It's primarily about trees: growing; grafting; harvesting; identifying.
However, I was completely swept up by this book from the opening page.

The first half of the book alternates between the perspectives of Sadie and James Goodenough, a married couple who are trying their best to survive and raise their children in swampland that has no regards for their plans.

The second half of the book follows the lives of their children. Robert is a very real and likable character. His hardworking and thoughtful nature have got him far in life but he has no real direction, eventually he has to make up his mind about what he wants in life and what he's prepared to do to get it.

This book is about how he reaches that point and all the events that shape him leading up to it. It's an irresistably human story with strong and vibrant characters living out their lives in a fascinating setting. The writing style is gorgeous and utterly magical - I can't recommend this book enough

“Robert had tried to lead an honest life, even when surrounded by dishonest people, but no matter how cleanly he lived now, he had made one mistake that he could never escape.”

I picked this quote out from Tracy Chevalier's eighth novel because it focuses on one of the more likable characters (and sections) of this story. Robert, youngest son of James and Sadie Goodenough, has spent his adult life running westwards for a reason we do not uncover until late in the book. Because of something that happened in the orchard on his family's land in Ohio's Black Swamp, an incident Chevalier doesn't rush to reveal but instead teasingly hints at.

In At the Edge of the Orchard our author returns to the mid-19th century and to Ohio in the wake of the gold rush. The Goodenough family have been struggling for nine years through poverty and illness to grow the requisite 50 trees that will secure their claim to their land in the swamp. Their struggle is intensified by the absolute and searing hostility between our married protagonists, James and Sadie, who drink, fight, divide loyalties between their children and, all in all, play out their dysfunctional drama in the alternating early chapters of this novel. These pages were a struggle to read, I must admit. Reading about the miserable battles of this couple almost threw me off but in the end I was glad I continued to read as the story did eventually give way to some light.

Although Robert carries with him the burden of his past and we are often taken back to harder times as he revisits his upbringing, it is through Robert's story that Chevalier's writing shines. Settling in California, Robert secures a job with seed agent William Lobb, thanks to his knowledge of trees. William is one of a handful of real historical characters to appear in this story and, as with Girl with a Pearl Earring and so many of Chevalier's other novels, we are witness to some fascinating historical references that are skilfully incorporated into the story without weighing it down. It is a great ability to include such detailed research into a book like this and not to make the story feel heavy, which is something I absolutely praise our author for.

This is quite a lovely patchwork of stories that I really did enjoy reading. Yes, there are some dark and depressing parts in this novel - the Goodenough's hostile and dysfunctional relationship and Sadie's drinking and how it leads to her taking her frustrations out on her children are particularly hard to endure. But what saves this is that these characters have enough self-awareness to feel remorse and, so, we are hesitant to completely write them off. Eventually, hope comes in the form of Robert, whose story gives the promise of renewal, both in life and land.

In true Chevalier style this is fiction and fact beautifully intertwined. Life in early America was hard. Life in the swamps of Ohio was harder. We live the lives of the Goodenough family as they struggle with disease and death. We follow Robert to the west coast via his letters home. A great book.

Now the story/myth of Johnny Appleseed is well written up in Michael Pollan’s book, ‘the Botany of Desire’ which I happen to have read.
He mentions that when the Europeans’ came to the Western Frontier they brought aa ‘portable ecosystem’ with them. This system through seeds and animals recreated their accustomed way of life whether intentionally, as in the case of John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) or unintentionally such as weeds and diseases.
John Chapman had very fixed ideas about how to use his apples as he was vegan and believed that plants could feel hurt. He belonged to a specific Church which advocated a particular way of life and this included for Chapman not grafting an apple stock. Thus the seeds and seedlings he persuaded new settlers to buy to enable them to claim their lands, evolved with their climates into different species adapted to new soil and weather conditions. Chapman persuade the Govt to grant a claim provided the claimant planted 50 trees in 10 years – thus providing himself with a living as he sold these trees to the claimants on his travels. Chapman maintained a vast acreage of orchards growing on his seedlings but these seedling were really only ‘spitters’, fit for cider not eating. They were a hardy but bitter variety and couldn’t be grafted according to Chapman’s beliefs into eaters. Settlers indeed drank pints of cider – and the stronger variant Applejack – every day as the water was not fit to drink. Thus he became both famous and wealthy.
Where people did graft or the apples grew away from the original into a new variant, there were a multitude of colours, flavours and sizes. Pollan notes that when visiting the Plant Genetics Institute’s orchard he found apples that tasted of bananas, or pears, or were spicy, or sticky-sweet. Some were purple at or near-blue, or weighed more than a pound or were striped.
In this book the first chapter introduces us to Johnny Appleseed on his travels from homestead to homestead in the Black Swamp of Ohio which stretched 25 miles (40 km) wide (north to south) and 100 miles (160 km) long, covering an estimated 1,500 square miles (4,000 km2).[3] Gradually drained and settled in the second half of the 19th century, and is now highly productive farm land according to Wikipedia. At the time of the story it was only just being settled and mosquitoes were still a regular visitor with associated malaria and the deaths of younger and and weaker members of the settlers. And so the story starts telling us about one family who attempted to settle in this area.
It is a slow burn of a story (unless you are intensely interested in the settling of the Black Swamp) but persevere and the later chapters are much better. You will learn about plant fever n the UK and just how much money could be made by bringing home rare plants and seeds and the difficulties of doing so. You will find out what it was like to mine for gold in San Francisco and just how difficult life was for women on these rough frontiers and the few options open to them for survival.
Some great reading and lots to learn about how the West was Settled and by whom.

As a survivor of domestic violence, I found some of the scenes hard to read, but they're successful in how real they seem. An interesting historical fiction, based in a time and place I know little about, and generally a gripping read.

Excellent research worn very lightly,

In bleak Black Swamp in the 1830s, the Goodenough family (just) ekes out a living. Young Robert hears the merits of different strains of apple fiercely debated between his warring parents. No longer able to tolerate the combative atmosphere, he decamps to California and another type of tree altogether.

I've heard Tracy Chevalier discuss the level of research that goes into every one of her historical novels. She's meticulous, yet never overwhelms the reader with facts just because she can. I really enjoyed this introduction to a period I knew little about and, having read it first time around for the story, I look forward to rereading it more s-l-o-w-l-y to enjoy the entrancing language.

I had in my head like we all do about how this book would be, it was totally different.
It was a little hard going in the beginning and difficult to read and i ended up putting it down and leaving it a while. I picked it back up a few months later and hit it hard , i found the characters one by one they bloomed out and i 'found' the family.
It did take me some time to read , it was the first Tracey Chevalier book I have read and perhaps I wasn't ready for the length. I find it difficult to read lengthy and very descriptive books but it definitely was well written with rich language and imagery.

I really enjoyed Tracy Chevalier's 'The Last Runaway' so when I was given the chance to read & review this book I was really pleased.

The book does start quite slowly with the tale of the Goodenough family who have ended up in The Black Swamp. James is obsessed with growing his apple trees for the sweet eaters, whereas Sadie is only interested in the ones that go into alcohol. The narrator switches from the husband to the wife- and I really think Sadie Goodenough is one of the most obnoxious characters I've come across in a while! When tragedy strikes the family Robert sets off west and by accident he ends up working for William Loeb collecting tree specimens.

I love Tracy Chevalier's style of writing. I loved her descriptions of the trees- being a bit of a tree addict starved of them in Shetland! I longed to be in those sequoia groves. I felt sorry for James thrown from one situation to another, never really knowing what he wants. I finished with a smile on my face and wondering what would happen next- will we ever find out? There is scope for a sequel I think!

Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for this one- I loved it!

At times this book is as dark and bleak as a book can be, and the character of Sadie is extraordinary – I doubt I’ll read about a more memorable fictional woman this year. Tracy Chevalier doesn’t hold back: the reader wants so much to like her, keeps expecting that there will be some softening, that she will start behaving better or showing some love or affection, but she keeps right on going…

The action runs from 1838 to 1856: starting out in the Black Swamp of Ohio, a place that is just as horrible as it sounds. The Goodenough family have staked a claim to a smallholding, and are growing apples. The character mentioned in the first extract is John Chapman, who is an American folkhero known as Johnny Appleseed (I had never heard of him till I went to live in the USA in the 90s, and found out about him via children’s books), who carries apple seeds and seedlings by boat to the farming families. 

The book goes into considerable detail about growing apples, starting out with distinguishing between eaters and spitters – the spitters are cider apples. James and Sadie have a number of children and have to work through every bad circumstance you could think of, and then some, and also fight each other with great bitterness, utterly vicious. There is ‘swamp fever’, which seems to be malaria:
Almost every year one of his children was picked off, to join the row of graves marked with wooden crosses in a slightly higher spot in the woods not far from the cabin. With each grave he’d had to clear maples and ash to make space to dig. He’d learned to do this in July, before anyone died, so that the body did not have to wait for him to wrestle with the trees’ extensive roots.
Of all the heart-stopping descriptions of children dying…

The story is compelling but very downbeat, but then just in time the action moves and follows one of the sons who leaves home, and we follow him over the next few years. Robert does many different things, but in the end he turns out to be as obsessed by trees as his father was – not just apple trees either. He gets involved in plant collection, but also is tied up with the extraordinary Calaveras Grove – a real-life grove of giant sequoia trees. The descriptions of the trees and the surroundings are amazing, absolutely riveting, sticking in my mind.

At one point Billie Lapham (a real-life character) is bothered by seedlings from the trees going to England:
“England! You plant redwoods there, nobody’ll come from there to see Cally Grove trees.”
(Chevalier is always careful to distinguish between redwoods and sequoias, but some of the characters in the book are less careful.)

I don’t know what happens to the seedlings in the book, but I can tell Billie that he’s wrong – from when I was a child I always longed to see the giant trees of California, and it was one of the great adventures of my life when I achieved my ambition – and particularly when I drove through a redwood tree.


 



The story goes back into the past so we finally find out what happened to the family, why Robert left, and then it’s back to finish off the story of the Goodenoughs.

I’m not sure I’ve made much of a hand at describing the book, with its multiple voices. But I can say it was a wonderful book, I loved it, though that may be because I am as fascinated by big trees as the book is. Maybe other people would be less entranced?

One thing – talking about The Dollmaker, Harriette Arnow’s masterpiece, recently I argued with the book’s contention that living in the country was automatically much better than living in the city, that it was a straight black and white distinction. Now this book has no such feeling, and is quite plain about the horrors of dirt farming, and swamps, and the misery of being a long way to town. Evidence for the prosecution? - this book is knock-out evidence.

Picture of Johnny Appleseed is a mural in Mansfield Ohio, from the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress has a fascinating collection of old photos showing the trees at Calaveras Grove, a key setting for the book – anyone who reads the book and is interested should go and take a look, as it’s an amazing opportunity to see what Chevalier is writing about. I was spoilt for choice.

All the tree photos are from Library of Congress.

The drawing is of people dancing on the treestump.

A very interesting novel, telling of a family's life in post civil war U.S.A with seemingly little law and order. Based on fact, a really interesting account of collecting tree seeds , growing apple trees, grafting them etc. A hard and brutal life with few rewards. A very unusual theme, I really enjoyed reading it.

I usually love books by this author but have found this one hard-going. It was well-written and had great characters but the story just didn't grab me and I found it hard to care about what was happening.

I found the start of this book hard - the parts set in the Black Swamp were awful as were the parents even if they had some valid reasons for being the way they were. Well written though, other characters good and an interesting take on some historical people and events and the parts set in California were excellent.

I loved this book and I cant wait to read others by the same author. I liked the setting in the nineteenth century, it tells the story of a family that settle to live in the swamps of Ohio. The detail that the author gives draws you in to the place and the era. I learnt so much about a subject that I had given no thought to, the transporting of trees from the US to the UK and the other way. It is fascinating. The family are trying to make a living in difficult circumstances and how things evolve is unusual but the more I read the more I enjoyed it.

The story of Sequoias, apple trees and humans.
How do I even begin to describe the depth of this book as it takes us from the Black Swamp, Ohio, where James Goodenough desperately tries to set up an apple orchard growing spitters for cider and applejack and Golden Pippins (family of the Goodenoughs had brought the seeds of the Golden Pippins with them when they emigrated to America from England)?
Sadie, James' wife, is only keen on the spitters as she's (more than) partial to drinking large amounts of applejack. This causes friction between them. This friction, in turn, splits the loyalties amongst the children who have survived swamp fever. This killer arrives in the Black Swamp during August when the mosquitoes are most active and there seemed to be no cure for this deadly disease. When this fever hits the family, it's up to Robert and Martha, two of the original ten children born to James and Sadie, to tend to those affected by the fever. It is also these two children who are the most attentive to James when he works in the orchard.
Sadie's consumption of applejack leads to the violent side of her nature being exposed and it is after a particularly bad argument between her and James that a tragic accident happens and Robert feels it is impossible to remain on the farm and leaves.
Robert undertakes a variety of jobs before he meets William Lobb and starts working for him as he travels around the country looking for new plants to send back not only to Kew Gardens in England, but also large estates wishing to have exotic new plants to show off. Among his greatest discoveries are the Sequoias and Redwoods.
I tried to visit the Sequoias in the New Forest as often as possible and my feeling of overwhelming awe for these magnificent giants never diminishes. They are obviously not the same height or width of those that have been growing for thousands of years in America but, nevertheless, they are still magnificent and stand tall and proud in their new home so far from where they started their lives as seedlings in America.
I have always wondered how these magnificent trees landed up in England and now thanks to Tracy Chevalier's beautiful, visual and imaginative storyline, these great giants now mean more to me having followed Robert Goodenough's involvement in making it possible for the English to appreciate them. Robert Goodenough may not be "real", but Tracy Chevalier has managed, through her extraordinary ability to tell stories, to bring people to life who did live then. People like John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, who travelled around the Black Swamp and other states, selling apple seedlings to farmers. William Lobb was also an explorer who discovered many exotic plants we take for granted as to their origins when we use them to give colour in our gardens. However, my greatest joy has been finally learning how the discovery and subsequent transplanting of seeds and seedlings of the Sequoias to England, took place. It means that in future, when I visit these gentle giants, I will have a greater appreciation of people like William Lobb and all the other botanists who undertook hazardous trips to bring us plants and trees from afar.
Treebeard
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I was looking forward to reading this book, having read and enjoyed some of her others. this book exceeded me expectations it's really worth getting lost in. It has a lovely quality of being like a Dickens or Hardy, there is no sense that at two thirds through through it needs the central character to have completed various stages because the end is looming. This book has a timelessness and chapter endings etc are unnoticed as one charges on to the next element.
The Black Swamp in Ohio is the settlement from hell, Only the desperate would try to cultivate it. But the Goodenoughs were and they did. Sadie is only half the mother she should be, but with five of her ten children dying that is literally true. Her husband James learns to dig graves in advance because during the time of the annual swamp fever he will be incapacitated and unable to bury the most recently dead child!
Not surprisingly Robert, one of the surviving five makes his escape under tragic circumstances, eventually he realises he has absorbed his father's knowledge of trees and caring for them, The son's tuition on how to graft two kinds of apple trees is both fascinating and so practical I wished there was a suitable tree to hand so I could give it a try!
As Robert ventures further west, instead of leaving his family he actually grows nearer to connecting with it. His time with William Lobb, tree collector stands him in good stead for making a living and caring for those he finds, whom he loves.
It is a really engrossing, informative book with each character having so many sides to their character that there are no good or bad - just those whom life has twisted various ways, like the trees in the Black Swamp
I'd love a sequel!

Chevalier continues to be a master of historical fiction. 4/5 stars.

I’ve enjoyed all of Tracy Chevalier’s books. I leapt at the chance to request her latest without even reading the blurb, so confident was I that it would be good. And she hasn’t disappointed me.

Chevalier excels at capturing the atmosphere of a time and place. At the Edge of the Orchard transports the reader to mid-nineteenth-century America, where we struggle through the mud of the Black Swamps of Ohio before being whisked away to the hills of California to marvel at the redwoods and giant sequoias.

The story does shift around a fair bit. We jump back and forth in time, from a series of events in 1838 to another in the 1853-6, and geographically. We also get several narrative voices, which are all well-defined and distinctive. However, all these shifts are handled very well and I was never confused as to where or when we were or who was speaking. The period of time between the two main sections is covered brilliantly and briefly by a series of letters, making sure we can focus on the action which is of main interest.

Despite all this moving about, I wouldn’t say the plot is particularly complex or gripping. The experience of the times and places described is more important than any specific events or characters, although some of these do jump off the page. The deeply flawed and difficult-to-like Sadie is perhaps the most memorable of the characters. Her voice is one that will stick with me for a while.

Also, as with all of Chevalier’s books, it’s fascinating to get to the end and find out how many of the characters were real people and how many of the events/places described existed. As ever, the blending of fact and fiction is seamless and her research meticulous.

Overall: fans of historical fiction will enjoy At the Edge of the Orchard. I’d encourage anyone looking for something to read in the genre to pick up any of the author’s books.

An interesting read about a family who try to make a living in the black swamp. Robert, their son leaves and makes his way in the world and is reunited with his sister many years later.

I do enjoy a read that leaves behind more than just the story, especially ones that inform and educate, even when it is unintentional.

I think it is fair to say the story is about trees, yeh I know it’s also about family and relationship, but darn it there are a heck of a lot of trees. At first I thought, where is the author going with this, but then I have to admit Chevalier drew me in with all the seeds,grafting and complexities of apple trees.

On a side note, I enjoyed reading about the transport, import and export of plants and trees from foreign countries to more affluent ones. Unfortunately the foreign horticulture would often perish in the new climate.

Aside from the dysfunctional family and the trees, for me the story was also about Robert becoming the man he was always destined to be. He is his father’s son, regardless of what Sadie said to him. Her words are the catalyst to his emotional turmoil and the reason for his journeys.

Chevalier excels at giving the reader the same sense of awe and excitement at discovering the country and those giant trees. The majestic sequoias of Calaveras. It intrigued me so much I looked it up online, and I might just have a wee hankering for dancing on a giant tree stump now.

Aside from the tree and family perspective, the story also gives an interesting insight into the America of that particular era, especially in regards to early settlers. During almost two decades of travel Robert tries to remain in contact with his family. The sporadic letters scattered across the country are indicative of how family branches could lose contact completely in those times.

It is a beautiful read, albeit one that made me want to go forth and eat apples, especially ones that taste of honey and pineapples. It’s the kind of book you remember.
*Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my copy of At the Edge of the Orchard.*