The Cherry Pickers

I loved this book! A summer of coming of age for a 14 year old boy at his grandparents' cherry orchard. It is a good story and provides readers with very moving events throughout the summer.

4 and 1 / 2 stars

The writing in this book is beautiful, lyrical and almost musical. It is 1956 on a farm in Michigan.

A move from the city of Chicago to a farm dominated by an orchard in Michigan makes an indelible impression on a young boy. A 14-year-young boy named Howie delineates his small world by naming the orchard where he lives as man’s world, while the forest below has no sovereign. The forest is “below the hill.” That is to say below the safe, the comfortable and the known.

Here during a beautiful summer, he hangs about on the edge of the woods. He is sometimes proud of his deformed arm and uses it to shock teachers and play pranks on his sometimes friends. His drunken Aunt hates him, but his step-grandmother feels sorrow for the boy. His little brother is a tattletale, so he goes to the woods to smoke. He fantasizes about what goes on in the forest.

Life in the orchard is both routine and seasonal. Life in the woods, the boy imagines, is quite different; both wild and unpredictable. As Howie observes all, he grows in many ways.

I want to thank Netgalley and Windsor Hill Publishing for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

I enjoyed this book and could not put it down. The story of city boys growing up summers on the grandparents farm was mesmerizing. I thought the perspective of the boys on the migrant cherry pickers was spot on and confirmed why we need migrants in everyday America.