At the Edge of the Orchard

At the Edge of the Orchard is a historical novel by the American-British writer Tracy Chevalier, published in 2016.

James Goodenough's family had settled in Connecticut after leaving England, and in 1838 he moves them to Ohio to start again in the Black Swamp, where the work of clearing land and keeping the household alive takes everything they have. The swamp brings fever with it, and their children are taken from them one at a time while the family struggles to survive. That part of the story ends in tragedy, and the novel then picks up fifteen years later with their youngest son, Robert, who has been moving west since he left, trying to get away from his memory of what happened at home. He finds work among the redwoods and sequoias of California, in a landscape built on a different kind of tree from the orchard fruit his father grew, and the last part of the book follows what happens when the past he has been outrunning catches up with him.

Chevalier writes historical fiction about ordinary people in specific trades and places, and this novel is built around two very different kinds of tree.