This book gives an interesting insight into apple farming and the amount of chemical it takes to get the perfect apple. Worth reading.

The author's note in this memoir notes that a couple of characters are composites, and that some events have been combined, told out of sequence, or timelines condensed for sake of story flow. The result is a particularly novelistic memoir - perhaps unsurprising as the author has written in a wide variety of genres both under her own name and that of Anne Frasier.

As a young hippie-esque bartender from a sketchy family, the author meets a straight-laced local farmer, who stands to inherit a significant orchard. After knowing each other only a short time, they marry, much to the chagrin of her new husband's family. The clash of cultures and values makes for a turbulent relationship launch, but somehow they make it work; hanging over the life they're building, however, like the sword of Damocles, is the terrible farming practices which involve ghastly amounts of toxic chemicals. This is a good read, even if it will put you off eating apples.

So good.

This memoir was a real discovery, so simply but powerfully written, with a bizarre ending that sends a message to all who value our earth.
The author deserves wider recognition - and we deserve more books from her! Elisabeth.

A beautiful and haunting book. I can't wait to read more by this author.

"The Orchard is being hailed, perhaps inevitably, as on par with Rachel Carson's 1962 classic Silent Spring. It isn't. Silent Spring is a scientific examination of our Earth and our systematic killing of it, with 55 pages of end notes citing works with titles such as No More Arsenic and Effect [cct] of Fish Poisons on Water Supply. But you might think of this as a complement to it; the personal story that drives home the truth behind the numbing mass of statistics that Carson so awfully wields."
Kathleen Byrne
Globe and Mail