The Garden of Eden

Finished August 31

The Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala

This book takes place mostly in 1993, with the character Lannie having experiences as early as 1984. This is when Lannie arrived as a volunteer in Ethiopia. She was deeply affected by the news of Ethiopian famine and was determined to find a way to help there. Without medical or other specialized training, she found a church willing to send her for her reporting on what was happening. Lannie makes herself useful in whatever way she can, picking up knowledge as she goes. 

When she was a young child, she was dumped on her uncle Barney and aunt Iris by her father, Howard, Barney's older half-brother following the death of her mother. Her younger siblings, Dillon and Misty, were left with another relative in Calgary.

Lannie had lived in Chinook, Saskatchewan, and her aunt and uncle had a farm just outside town. Despite the love they had for her, Lannie always felt out of place. 

In 1993 in Chinook, Iris is spurred to leave the town to search for Lannie who has been gone for a decade, with letters petering out soon after she left. The impetus to search for Lannie is a sudden, unexpected loss of her own. Iris thinks about her own ties to the land, living on the farm that her mother and grandmother lived on before her. She has often thought about the indigenous people who lived there before them, protecting the signs they left behind, and spending time in the remaining wild coulee that is part of her property.

The book is separated into three sections: Seeding, Growing, and Harvesting, and there are overarching themes of drought, and land use and conservation.

Both women are also searching for love and belonging, and both have dreams that take them into the past and the future. They also feel a sense of a woman guiding them in these dreams. 

I really enjoyed seeing their experiences, even the difficult ones, and seeing them grow as they realized that their strength was within them, and they needed to love themselves first. A moving story that shows the commonalities across cultures. 

Meet Me at the Museum

Finished April 30

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

This delightful novel is told entirely through letters between two people. In East Anglia in England, Tina Hopgood is the wife of a farmer, who she married decades ago when she got pregnant. Both parents thought it was for the best. Tina had had other plans, but she agreed. She and her husband have three grown children, all of them also working at the farm, which has many side projects, like renting out hay bales and having vacation cottages. After her childhood friend Bella has died, she is remembering her youth and an interaction with a professor from Denmark about the Tollund Man. She writes a letter to him at the Silkeborg Museum where she talks about the interaction, her thoughts about the Tollund Man who she intended to visit years ago but didn't, and about her thoughts around aging.

The professor she writes to is long dead, but a curator at the Museum, Anders Larsen writes back, trying to answer questions that he thinks are implied in her letter. And so the conversation begins. 

The letters cover around a year and a half in time, but cover so much more as the two share their histories, their thoughts on life, ask advice over issues that have presented themselves, and become a friendship. 

Both have suffered loss, and are faced with changes through the lives of their children. Their conversation also leads them to examine their own lives and decide whether they want to change things for themselves as well. 

This is a lovely novel, with beautiful writing, and many emotional moments. It is a novel that talks about life, love, selflessness, and so much more. Definitely one of my favourite books of the year. 

Out of the Dust

Finished August 26

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

This teen novel, a winner of the Newberry Award, is set in Oklahoma over the course of two years, 1934 and 1935. It is a story told in poetry, free verse, and grouped by season. Each poem in the seasonal sections also has a month noted to set it in time. 

Billie Jo Kelby lives with her parents on a farm outside of their small Oklahoma town, not far from the Texas border. Amarillo is only fifty miles south of them. Billie Jo has music in common with her mother. Her father's wedding gift to her mother was a piano, and although Billie Jo plays more modern music than her mother, she is a natural, often asked to perform in public. Another young musician that Bobbie Jo considers a rival is Mad Dog Craddock. He's been called by that name long enough that she doesn't even know what his real name is. 

As the book opens, Bobbie Jo has recently learned that her mother is pregnant and she hopes this baby will come for her parents, unlike many earlier ones. 

The drought has caused many to leave for the west, including her best friend Livie. They endure weeks without rain, and dust storms that can be fatal to those caught out in them. 

Luckily, Bobbie Jo's family has a good well, and her mother has grown apple trees that she takes great pride in. 

The poems that make up this book and tell the story of her life over the course of these two years, range in topic from the weather, to neighbours, to loss, to news events (like the Dionne quintuplets) to community events. But above all, they give us Bobbie Jo's inner life, her feelings about what is happening in her life, her struggles and her joys. 

A fantastic read. 

A Family For Christmas

Finished September 2

A Family for Christmas by Helen Scott Taylor

This novella follows a young engineer, Eve Scott, as she travels through the snowy British countryside to get to a job interview. The weather is intense, making driving difficult, and when a lamb appears on the road in front of her and she brakes, she ends up in the ditch. Luckily, sheep farmer Tom Millington is out looking for the lamb, his daughter's pet, and offers her a ride to his farm where she can wait for assistance. When Eve encounters young Polly she is charmed by the child and the child develops a quick attachment for her, wanting her to stay. Eve realizes that Polly's mother is no longer in the picture, and while she is attracted to Tom, she has a career she has worked hard to establish and wants to go further in. 

Eve rearranges her interview once she realizes that her car won't be pulled out in time, and ends up going back for Christmas as she has no other plans. 

An instant attraction, a rescue in a remote and dangerous circumstance, and a child's belief in miracles make this a cozy romance for the holiday season. 

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

Finished April 21

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman

This novel was one I chose by title alone and it was definitely a surprise. Set in Australia, inland and within a day's drive from Melbourne, most of the story takes place in the late 1960s, either on a small farm, or in the town nearby. There are also occasional flashbacks to one character's experiences during World War II and its aftermath. The main character here, Tom Hope, wakes up to a note from his wife Trudy letting him know that she's left him. This is devastating to him, as he loved her, but looking back he can see that there were signs that she wasn't happy. As she returns and leaves again, the experience leaves him with a child that he finds himself loving fiercely and forming a strong bond with. 

When he loses the child, he is once more devastated, losing himself in the routine of farmwork. Tom has sheep, and fruit trees, and makes enough to get by. 

When he hears of a bookshop opening in town, he is surprised and curious. When he meets the woman who is going to run the store, he finds himself drawn to her. She is Hannah Babel, a Hungarian Jewish woman who survived Auschwitz, but lost her own family. She has done a variety of things since then, but the bookshop is close to her heart. Although older than Tom, she finds herself drawn to him as well, and both of them dare to believe that they have found love. 

As they face emotional and financial barriers, their relationship is stressed and in jeopardy unless they can find a way forward despite their past pain. 

The characters are unique and have their own quirks and outlooks. Tom is a very giving man, one who cares about people and takes disappointment to heart. Hannah has suffered much loss in her life, and is afraid of more. These are characters with histories that are painful, and as they learn to understand each other and trust each other, there is hope that they can find a future together. 

The setting comes alive here, and one can picture the farm and the hills and river. There are many interesting characters besides the two central ones, and I would be interested in learning more about many of them. As the plot brings Tom and Hannah together and threatens to rend them apart again, there are bits of larger stories that influence theirs and add depth. 

A very interesting read. 

The Basel Killings

Finished November 20 

The Basel Killings by Hansjörg Schneider

This is the fifth book in the series featuring Inspector Hunkeler, and the first to be translated into English. I think it is also the first series I've read that is set in Switzerland. Hunkeler is a divorced father, with his daughter grown up. He has a girlfriend who is a kindergarten teacher, and she is on a three month sabbatical, spending it in Paris. He misses her, and often spends his evening in a bar not far from his apartment. Besides his apartment in Basel, Hunkeler also has a farm in Alsace, across the nearby border in France. He spends a fair bit of time there, and has an arrangement with a nearby farmer and his wife who look after his place, including the chickens, when he isn't around. 

He's had a case of a murdered prostitute for a while and while he keeps going over the case files, he just can't seem to find a solution to it. 

As the story begins, he leaves the bar one evening to go home, but finds the sudden cold air outside triggers his need to pee, and rather than return to the bar, or go to the nearby billiards hall, where he also spends time, he elects to pee on the potted tree in the nearby courtyard of a bank. The courtyard also holds a bench and he notices an acquaintance sitting there, apparently asleep. He sits near him and begins a conversation, but when there is no reply, he looks closer and finds that the man is dead, murdered in fact, and after being ill from the shock, he calls the police.

Because he is acquainted with the dead man, he is not assigned the case, and in fact seems to be on the outs with the man assigned to it. 

Hunkeler is an interesting character, one who is well educated, intelligent, and knowledgeable, but also comfortable with less refined company, such as those in the bar he frequents. He knows some of the local immigrant community, and doesn't judge himself superior to them. 

He knows the rural police near Basel, as well as those in Alsace where he also lives. He walks a lot, thinking and observing as he does. He is a man who can make connections, who listens to people from all walks of life and accords what they tell him a measure of respect. It is all of this that makes him a good policeman. 

As he digs into the lives of both the prostitute and the man on the bench, he looks for connections, and trusts his instincts. I also learned some history that I hadn't been aware of before. The deliberate and planned work of the Swiss against the Romany through an organization called Kinder der Landstrasse (Children of the Road). It is very similar in nature to the actions here in Canada around residential schools, but goes even further, permanently separating children from their parents.

We don't see much of his girlfriend here, only glimpses, but we see into Hunkeler's personal life in other ways, and he is a very intriguing character.

The Cow Said Boo!

Finished September 30

The Cow Said Boo! by Lana Button, illustrated by Alice Carter

This delightful tale is perfect for coming up to Hallowe'en. The book begins with the cow hanging out her laundry while dealing with a head cold. Instead of saying "Moo!", it sounds like she is saying "Boo!", so when she stumbles into the clothesline and gets a sheet caught around her, she ends up scaring all her other farm animal friends by looking and sounding like a very large and scary ghost.

As often happens when people are scared and then find out that the thing that scared them wasn't really scary, after their fear ends, at first they get a little angry.

But that night, a fox creeps onto the farm up to no good, and the cow is able to scare the fox as well, saving all her friends from this dangerous intruder. Her friends realize that not only had she saved them, she was ill, and so they rally together and look after her until she is well and can say "Moo!" again. However, as often happens when you spend time closely with someone who is sick without protection, the other animals have now caught her cold, and so the noises they normally make come out sounding odd as well. 

The back inside cover offers instructions on how to wash your hands (or hooves and paws!) properly to keep from getting or passing along a cold through touch.

The illustrations really bring the story to life and show the personalities of the animals. 

A fun and lighthearted read about a group of friends. 

The Grass Is Singing

Finished November 13 

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

This novel was one I was due to read with my book club this year, but plans changed. I decided to read it anyway since I had it on my shelves. 

To me this reads as a tragedy. The main character here Mary, grew up in South Africa and Rhodesia, moving around to different stations with her parents. Theirs was not a happy marriage, and Mary escaped to the city young, and became an office worker. Her emotional growth was a bit stunted, never leaving the phase of innocent teenage flirting. She was good at her job, and it was only when she overheard gossip about herself that she became dissatisfied with her life and began to look to marriage as a solution. 

Her impetuous marriage to a veldt farmer in Rhodesia was not the solution she needed, but it is where she found herself. 

We know from the beginning of the book her end, there on the farm, through an act of violence. The book takes us through how she got to that place, the various people that had a role in that life, from her husband Dick to their closest neighbour and the black workers that were on the farm.

This is an immensely sad book, and one mourns the forces that took these characters on this journey. Mental health is definitely one of them as we see the deterioration in both Mary and Dick through their time together. 

So well written, but so so sad.

Language warning: First published in 1950, this book uses racial terms that are not acceptable now.

Starlight

Finished October 1
Starlight by Richard Wagamese

This novel was left unfinished when Wagamese died in 2017. Starlight is the last name of one of the main characters in the book, Frank Starlight. The book opens with him as a young man at the funeral of the man who raised him. He intends to leave the remote farm and explore the world, but as he gets to the main road, he stops and considers and turns around for home.
The book then jumps ahead a few years. Frank has found a passion in photography, growing close to the wild animals that share his area of the world and finding a way to share intense moments of their being through his photography. He lives a bachelor life on the farm, with his hired man Eugene Roth. They both work hard, keeping the farm and woodlot in good form and raising cattle.
Emmy Strong has had a tough life and her choices haven't always been good ones. Lately she's been living with Jeff Cadotte, a man who treats her as a possession he can do with as he will. As her part of the book begins, he and one of his friends Anderson are sleeping off a drunken night gambling. She aims to take some money from him, his truck and leave to escape what she fears will by the end of her. She also fears for her daughter Winnie, now nine, as she sees how Cadotte is starting to look at her. Her departure doesn't go well, and she is now on the run, and Cadotte is a man who believes strong in revenge and retribution, not recognizing it is his actions that have led to hers.
When Emmy's journey leads her to the town near Frank's farm, and she takes one chance too many, they enter each other's lives in an interesting way, Frank remembering the man that took him in when he didn't know how to live his life.
This is a story about how important our connection to nature is, how we can use nature to connect to our truest selves and find our way in life. It is also a love story on many levels. Frank is a very peaceful man, a man who knows his world, but is still uncomfortable with the fame his photographs have brought him. This is definitely a book that offers comfort, and the editors have offered some insight into the ending that Wagamese intended for this story.

Land Girls

Finished August 16
Land Girls by Angela Huth

This historical fiction novel is set in late 1941 and 1942 except for a prologue and epilogue. Three young women have signed up to be land girls and do their part in the war. They've gone through their training and been assigned to a farm in the West Country area. The farm is owned by John and Faith Lawrence a middle-aged couple with one grown son. Their son Joe suffers from asthma and so is working on the farm as well. Faith has made over the attic into one large room for the three young women. They also have a local man who helps out, Ratty. He worked as a hired hand for years, until his age lessened his ability to do some of the work. He is a man who has been dealt a bad hand, marrying a woman who proved herself to be more a hindrance than a partner in his life. I found his story a sad one.
Prudence (Prue) was apprenticing as a hairdresser with her mother, who owns a beauty parlour in Manchester before volunteering. Prue loves makeup, clothes, and having fun. She is up for a good time, but comes across as a well-meaning happy young woman looking for her way in the world. Ag, was an undergraduate at Cambridge who wants both a family and a career. She had met a young man briefly in college, never dated him, but seems to hold out hope that he is the man for her. She plans to study law after the war. Stella is from Surrey and her family is well-off. She recently started a relationship with Philip who is in the Navy, and she hopes to have a future with him.
Joe has a fiancee, a girl he's known since they were kids, Janet. Janet is working quite a long ways away putting together spark plugs in a factory. She has access to her father's car, and a couple times a year comes to the farm to see Joe.
As we see the girls get to know each other, and get to know their host family, we also see them engage in the work they've come there to do. From milking cows, cleaning up pens and the yard, working in the fields, and hedging, there is a lot of hard work here and that is made clear. But the girls do their work and get along quite well with each other. They have things they prefer to do, and we see them develop and grow. Prue develops a fondness for the large sow and gets territorial about tending to her needs. She's also proud of her ability to plow a straight furrow. Ag shows a distinct knack for hedging that John is impressed with.
I liked all three girls and was interested to see how the developed and what happened to them after the war. I also found it fascinating to read about the farm work and see what was involved in some of the tasks they undertook.
A very enjoyable read.

The Lost Husband

Finished March 7
The Lost Husband by Katherine Center

This heartwarming book follows Libby Moran as she starts a new life. Two years ago, Libby lost her husband Danny in an accident. The accident also injured her daughter Abby, who now walks with a slight limp. Shortly after that Libby moved in with her mom, with the two kids, Abby and Tank sleeping in the guest room, and Abby on the couch. Her mother bristles with resentment and makes Libby feel even worse than she does already. So when a letter comes from her mother's sister, Libby's Aunt Jean, offering a place to live on her farm in exchange for the farm work that Jean is no longer physically able to do, Libby jumps at it.
Her mother immediately tries to dissuade her, which doesn't make sense to Libby as she knows her mother doesn't want them in her apartment. Libby moves quickly, and finds her aunt Jean different than she expected, and the farm something she can get used to.
As Libby drives with the kids into town, she nearly runs down a woman at an intersection, and the woman offers to help Libby find her lost husband, hence the title of the book. As Libby grows to know more about her and her situation, she makes a friend as well.
This is a book about loss, but also hope. The chance to make a fresh start, as Libby does on her aunt's goat farm, and to learn more about her past as well.

Ten Miles Past Normal

Finished July 2
Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark Dowell, narrated by Jessica Almasy

This teen novel has 14-year-old Janie Gorman in her first year of high school, and finding that her life on a farm has drawn attention in ways that aren't great, like the goat poo stuck to the bottom of her shoe creating an odor investigation on the bus to school. Up to now, the decision made by her family, at her suggestion, back when she was nine, to move to a farm and raise goats has been a good one. But now, she has a different lunch hour from her group of middle school friends, and has resorted to scarfing down her lunch at her locker and spending the rest of the time in the library.
Of course the fact that her mom writes a blog about their life on the farm doesn't help, either. As Janie chooses a subject for a school project in the one class she does share with her best friend Sarah, and develops a new friendship with another girl hanging in the library, she also finds herself learning new skills, like playing bass guitar, and quilting, and exploring her artistic side in new ways.
This is a novel of growth, of early romance, of families, and of history.
I liked the book a lot and think Janie is a very cool girl.

A Gate at the Stairs

Finished October 30
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

This novel follows Tassie Keltjin, daughter of a Wisconsin farmer, who is living in a small university town as a student. Tassie is the older of two siblings, with her younger brother Robert still in high school.
The book starts shortly before Christmas as Tassie looks for a job that would begin when she returned to school in January. She ends up getting hired by a high-end restaurant owner Sarah Brink, who has an adoption planned for early in the new year. It turns out that Sarah knows Tassie's father slightly, a farmer who specializes in organic produce for restaurants, a business he started with potatoes.
We are taken through the next few months in Tassie's life. She goes with Sarah and her husband Edward for the adoption, and continues her studies at college. She meets a boy that she gets very involved with, we see her looking at her life from both within it, and from outside.
The next few months bring with them love, heartache, grief, and growth. The stories that Tassie is a part of are distant from the small town farm life she grew up in, and yet not.
I read this book slowly, thinking over the story as it developed, and was moved. A great read.

The Excellent Lombards

Finished July 1
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton

This novel is narrated by Mary Frances Lombard, As the book begins, she is eleven years old, her brother William is twelve and they are helping their father with haying on the farm. Her father and a cousin Sherwood co-own the farm along with a great-aunt.
Mary Frances is passionate about the farm and wanting to stay there farming when she grows up. She is intimidated by Aunt May Hill, who lives on her own floor of the main house, doesn't talk a lot, but is very handing at repairing things. As Mary Frances grows up, you see her relationships change with her earnest, hardworking father Jim, her librarian mother Nellie, her younger cousin Amanda, her brother William, and all the rest of the people in her life, family and others.
She and William have christened the two houses on the farm Velta and Volta, and are aware the partnership is a relationship that can be fraught at times.
Sherwood's father owned the farm, but when it became necessary, Jim came and worked hard and stayed and was thus rewarded for his loyalty and hard work, but it created a resentment. Aunt May Hill owns the right of way to the barn, an important piece, and while she has no children, she does have a nephew Philip, who also develops a closer relationship with the farm.
As Mary Frances watches the changes in interests, in the way the future might develop, she reacts in ways not always logical.
This is a story of people making a living off the land, but realizing there is a wider world out there, and finding their own way to live in it.
As always, Hamilton is a wonderful writer, giving us access to a character in a way that feels like we really know her.

Lead Me Home

Finished April 9
Lead Me Home by Amy K. Sorrells

Set in the small town of Sycamore, Indiana, this novel follows two families. James Horton is a local minister, still not recovered from the loss of his wife Molly in a car accident more than a year earlier. Now he is dealing with the death by suicide of one of his parishioners, Frank Whitmore. Faced with a prolonged electricity outage impacting his dairy farm, Frank apparently felt he had no where to turn, and short 30 of his cows before turning the gun on himself.
The remaining cows will be taken in by another small dairy farm, with about 60 cows, nearby run by Laurie Burden, along with her sons Noble and Eustace. Laurie's husband Dale, a long-distance trucker left them a few years back. Eustace is a unique young man, intelligent and sensitive, but non-verbal. He has faced discrimination yet maintains his own priorities despite outside views.
James is also facing the foreclosure of the church itself, a result of dwindling attendance and debt owing on a structural repair a few years earlier. James' 17-year-old daughter Shelby, has been withdrawing from her friends and James since the death of her mother, She has been going out with a local bad boy, worrying those who care about her.
This is a tale of the economic pressures on a small farming community, added to some personal tragedies It is a story of faith, resilience, and community. Even when people feel that their situation affects them alone, because of their ties to the community, others are aware and respond in meaningful ways to make a difference. I like the nuances of the characters. There are no saints her, just real people struggling with their issues, supporting each other as best they can.

This Is Why

Finished March 27
This Is Why by Leland Spencer, interior drawings by Mackenzie Hidalgo

This humorous memoir of growing up on a farm in Idaho had a similar feel to listening to my dad tell stories of his childhood. Leland had a friend Smitty who grew up on the next farm over, and an older brother. Smitty had a younger sister. Leland's neighbour on the other side was a hard-working bachelor who lived in an army tent and his brother who lived in the house on the property.
Leland's stories are about getting into trouble with his friend, the crazy things they thought up to do like tying strings to the legs of birds to have live kites, and throwing eggs, fruit, dirt clods or other things.
He obviously likes to tell a good story, even at his own expense and has a optimistic nature about the way things are going to turnout. From fishing to learning how to drive, Leland entertains his readers.

Wide Open

Finished October 14
Wide Open by Larry Bjornson

Set in the 1870s in Abilene, Kansas, this story is based on real events of the Midwest. The story begins in May 1871 and our storyteller here is Will Merritt, a boy. His father JT joined the United States 12 New York Cavalry during the Civil War, leaving his wife and son with his brother's family. When he returned for them in 1865 he found that he had a young daughter and that they had not been given the caring shelter he had hoped and the family moved on for other adventures. JT is always looking for what the future might bring and by 1871, he believes Abilene will provide the future he envisions.
Abilene is still a rough town, with one side of the tracks dubbed Texastown, a magnet for trouble and temporary visitors bringing cattle up from Texas to the train line. The mayor, Joe McCoy, hires Wild Bill Hickock to control this wildness. Will has a group of friends: Jasper, Gordon, Billy and Booth who are excited by this side of town and whose families are dependent on this activity for their livelihood. But there is a growing movement towards settlers and farming, providing a stable growth for the area, and Will's dad has decided to put his efforts behind that as he looks to the future once again. One particular family figures here, the Dunhams, with father Caleb and daughter Anna connecting to the Merritt family. Will's mother Eleanor is not a subservient wife, and works with JT towards their family's and community's future. This book shows the cruelty and compassion in this community and the inexorable move towards civilizing this region. Very entertaining.

Front and Center

Finished September 25
Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

This is the third book in the series featuring Wisconsin farm girl and athlete DJ Schwenk. Basketball season has begun and DJ knows she will be expected to take a leadership role on the team, but doesn't feel comfortable speaking up when others are watching. She also knows that a scholarship for basketball is the only way she will get to go to college given her family's financial circumstances.
Her old brother Win has taken an interest in her basketball and college issues after she helped him move forward in his life. But she doesn't like the pressure on her and isn't sure she is cut out for a top basketball school.
This novel is about self confidence, knowing who you are and being able to tell others, and being a role model. DJ likes flying under the radar, but that isn't possible for her right now, and she has to learn how to deal with attention and being the leader her skills naturally take her to. This is about friendship and growing up, about standing up for yourself and about not selling yourself short.

Wish You Were Here

Finished March 26
Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift, read by John Lee

This is a nice slow novel, with lots of character development and description. Jack Luxton grew up in a farming family in Devon. His one escape was a vacation two summers in a row at a caravan park that his mother took him and his younger brother to. The Luxton's had owned Jeb Farm for generations, and ran it as a dairy farm.
In the present Jack and his wife Ellie run a caravan park on the Isle of Wight, and Jack has just received word from the military that his younger brother Tom, who he hasn't seen or heard from in years, has been killed in Iraq.
As Jack reacts to this news, goes to the repatriation and then the funeral back in Devon and returns home to Ellie, you see Jack and Ellie struggle with the past that has brought them to where they are now, and gradually learn what that past consists of. You see the tragedies that befell them, the leavetakings, the impetus for the decision to leave Devon, the intractability of Jack on certain issues and the leader Ellie on most things. This novel is about how people survive, about the toil that takes on them and the relationships they have with others. It is about change in England as people leave the farms and the farms become "country homes" for those from the city. About the life changes that this brings.
The language of the novel takes you on, slowly, sometimes almost excruciatingly slowly, but it just keeps carrying you forward, uncovering the past as it goes.
A wonderful read.

The Orchardist

Finished March 8
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, read by Mark Bramhall

I loved this book. It is set in the early part of the twentieth century, in rural Washington state. A man named William Talmadge lives at the orchard that he, his mother and his sister came to when he was a child. His mother died and his sister disappeared, and he has made a lonely existence for himself. His only real contacts are a local healer named Caroline Middey, a few years older than him, and a group of native men who stop at the orchard on their horse trading trips, one of whom, Clee, Talmadge becomes especially close to.
One day, when he is selling his fruit in town, a couple of young girls, heavily pregnant and apparently vagrant, steal some of his apples. Later, the same girls show up at his orchard, and his compassion for them moves him to help them. When the man they are fleeing follows, a tragedy ensues, and leads to years of changed lives as Talmadge feels the need to protect all the victims.
This is a story told in a slow, languid fashion, gradually unfolding before the reader. It is rich in description and details and uses wonderful language to evoke the time and circumstances of all the characters. Because I was listening to the audiobook, I had to see out the physical book later to share some of these wonderful passages. The reader, Mark Bramhall, does an amazing job of storytelling using slow speaking, pauses, and other means to bring the story to vibrant life.

Here are some examples of the writing:

About his sister:

"The girl setting off, to be caught by something she did not anticipate. What else could have happened, really? The only thing worse, perhaps, than knowing for certain that she was abducted was not knowing. That was the sad truth.  And Talmadge lived in that uncertainty, he had made his home in it, and there was no possibility of him resting--truly resting--ever again."

later:

"She just kept walking. Nobody came after her. She walked until she could not hear the men behind her anymore, and the forest mended in silence behind her. They would wonder about her, they would even search for her, and they would hate her for it. But she had no choice. She could feel the old familiar feeling, waiting under the canopy of trees. It had fit her like a glove, and she was certain in her soul she had been there before. She had had to escape her own fate."

and

"And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction. Caroline Middey scrutinized the point; did not know if the distinction was important. (All distinctions are important.) But she did not think any more about it because at her back, suddenly, the child woke from her nap, and she rose at once to go to her."

and this:

"He was struck, as he was always stuck, by the horses' simultaneous ugliness and beauty. Different shapes, heights, colors: cream-colored, black, brown, yellow horses, horses with dappled rumps, with stockings; some white horses with pink snouts and blue eyes; tall horses, with muscular necks; others short, stunted, dwarfed-looking. All weighing around a quarter ton, some just over. He had seen these herds for years, and yet when they came through the trees he was always surprised by them. They were dirty, unkempt, stinking; overall unpredictable. Perhaps what made them so impressive was their undandledness. They had encountered no human up there in the mountains where they were captured. The men had gone up there, to the places where the horses lived, and dragged them--the horses--down to the plateaus and lowlands, and as a result the horses held the deepest grudge; they tore this way and that, tossing their heads, breathing rancid horse breath out of their rancid horse lungs. This is how he imagined it, as a boy lying awake at night, unable to sleep because of their presence in the field. He did not understand what they were. What do you mean, what are they? his mother had said. They are horses, Talmadge. But they were unknowable, both singly and as a herd. Even now it was difficult to look away from them."

I could go on and on, but hopefully you see what I mean by these. Definitely on my list of favourites for the year.